The Burma Thread. Everything Burma!!!

[Lancer]

Burma, not just a 5 letter word, now it's a thread in an effort to fill a deeper need in our pal che.

So, how about them Burmese?

[Timexwatch]

Shouldn't it be the Myanmar thread?

[GePap]

An article form Today's NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/19/international/asia/19myanmar.html?

Test of Wills: the Burmese Captive Who Will Not Budge

By SETH MYDANS
International Herald Tribune
Published: June 19, 2005

BANGKOK, June 18 - Seventeen years ago, as the people of Myanmar filled the streets in mass protests against their military dictatorship, a striking, self-possessed woman rose to address a rally at the great golden Shwedagon Pagoda. At the time, nobody realized the price she would pay for her outspokenness.

The woman, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, was visiting from her home in England to tend to her sick mother when pro-democracy protests swelled throughout the country in August 1988 despite a brutal response by the military that took thousands of lives.

In the months that followed she emerged, through a combination of charisma and pedigree, to lead what has so far been a futile opposition to the country's military leaders.

On Sunday, Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi will mark her 60th birthday under house arrest, where she has spent most of the intervening years, in an increasingly dilapidated house, more cut off than ever from contacts outside her weed-filled compound.

Her birthday has become an occasion for new international protests against a military junta that holds the country in its grip, jailing its opponents while ruining the country's economy and waging war against its ethnic minorities.

From one of the region's most refined and richly endowed nations, Myanmar has become its most desperate and reviled.

As the daughter of the country's founding hero, U Aung San, she held a nearly mystical appeal for people desperate to regain their freedoms and self-respect. With her dignity, self-sacrifice and perseverance, she has created a legend of her own.

She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and has joined the company of Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama of Tibet as international icons of a struggle for freedom. But in a contest between brute force and principle, between repression and the clearly expressed will of the people of Myanmar, it is the men with the guns who have managed so far to prevail, and the country's moral symbol who is their prisoner.

Calls for the release of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi have come from around the world in recent days, including statements from Washington and from Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations.

In Norway, the chairman of the Nobel Committee, Ole D. Mjoes, issued a rare statement about a past laureate, saying; "We ask that she be set free immediately. We look forward to the day that democracy again rules her country."

But the generals have released her twice already, most recently in May 2002, only to be shaken and shamed at her continuing, overwhelming popularity: huge crowds that gathered wherever she appeared.

One year after her last release, her convoy was attacked by an organized mob in what some analysts believe was an attempt to kill her, and she was returned to house arrest after a period of harsh treatment in prison.

"She has become the only leader that the Burmese people have acknowledged since the death of her father in 1947," said Josef Silverstein, an expert on Myanmar at Rutgers University. "I would add that she has in every way possible emulated what her father stood for, which was for the right of the people to govern themselves and to have a free and democratic country."

Shortly after her address at the Shwedagon Pagoda, she explicitly assumed her father's mantle, saying she would dedicate her life to the people of her country as he had done.

She made that clear in 1999 when she chose not to visit her husband, Michael Aris, in England, when he was dying of cancer, because she feared that the government would bar her from re-entering Myanmar. The Myanmar authorities had refused to allow him to visit her.

The United States, the European Union and other nations have responded to repression in Myanmar with economic penalties that have done little to affect its leadership. Myanmar's giant neighbors, China and India, with several other Asian nations, offer it an economic lifeline.

But opposition from the West is putting pressure on the junta now as it prepares to take over the rotating leadership of the regional 10-member political and economic grouping, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, next year.

The United States and some other nations have hinted strongly in recent weeks that they will boycott an annual meeting to which they are invited if it is held in Myanmar. Its regional neighbors, facing potential embarrassment, are beginning to press the junta to skip its turn as regional leader if it does not release Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi and improve its record on human rights.

At the same time, there has been an eruption of internal turmoil among the ruling generals, though like most things in Myanmar its details and its causes are unclear.

In October, Prime Minister Khin Nyunt, who was the head of military intelligence and one of the country's most powerful leaders, was fired and placed under house arrest. His trial on expected corruption charges has either begun or is about to begin, according to conflicting reports.

Over the years, as repression has continued in Myanmar, some of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi's allies abroad have complained about what they call her stubbornness and intransigence. But it is the military leaders who have several times switched track, ignoring her and vilifying her, opening and closing dialogues, freeing and rearresting her.

She has also been criticized for demanding that the government recognize the results of a parliamentary election in 1990 that was won overwhelmingly by her party, the National League for Democracy.

The remarkably open parliamentary election was a characteristic misjudgment by the junta, which had apparently expected to win. When Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi's party won more than 80 percent of the seats, the generals refused to recognize the results and clung to power.

Many who won seats were arrested. Bit by bit over the years the junta has whittled away at their party. Today its leaders are aging - Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi is the youngest - and its youth wing has atrophied.

More and more, the democratic opposition to military rule in Myanmar is personified by one isolated and determined woman. "Her stubbornness is her strength," Mr. Silverstein said. "This woman will not bend and will not break."

[chequita guevara]

As bad as SLORC is. I'm surprised at their restraint in not simply having killed her decades ago.

In addition to this, the Mon and Karen people are being exterminated by SLORC, as well as used as slaves to build a pipeline for Unical.

This is probably the most evil government on the planet today, with Sudan chasing close behind.

BTW, SLORC = the State Law and Order Restoration Committee, and is the dictatorship of Burma.

[Lancer]

Should we invade and restore democracy?

[Ramo]

Shouldn't it be the Myanmar thread?

SLORC renamed Burma "Myanmar." The acts of said genocidal bastards shouldn't be legitimized in even the most symbolic of ways.

[:) Smiley]

Originally posted by Lancer
Should we invade and restore democracy?

In addition to this, the Mon and Karen people are being exterminated by SLORC, as well as used as slaves to build a pipeline for Unical.

Apparently they do have oil.

[atawa]

So you prefer the name given to it by a foreign dictatorship over the local one?

[Ramo]

The local one's worse.

[atawa]

Has a better sound to it though

[Lancer]

"The Karen people"

The Karen people?

[chequita guevara]

It's a nation/tribe of people with the name Karen, kinda like the Sue.

Seriously, they live in SE Burma on the Malay Peninsula. Some also live in Thailand. Because of the repression and slavery, they revolted against SLORC, which responded by trying to wipe them out as a people.

[lord of the mark]

We should apply economic pressure to Burma, as some have suggested, and to some extent, IIUC, US and EU both do (hey, we're cooperating with Old Europe - whoda thunk it?) But that is not very effective (and its hard to make the case for further sanctions) cause the southeast asian nations are opposed to ANY economic coercion of Burma on human rights. So if Unical gets out, that just means a Thai company goes in. Oh, and theres one great power thats quite supportive of the Burmese govt.

10 points to whoever guesses who that is - hint, its one that there are lot of threads here about. Second hint, its connected to ashers avatar.

[Tingkai]

I was wondering how long it would take.

[lord of the mark]

from a column in the Independent:

"The departure of Western corporations extracting Burma's natural resources has not disrupted revenue flows to the regime, since Asian investors, especially those from the two fastest growing economies, China and India, are quick to fill the vacant seats. The generals have shrugged their departure off, rather than feeling pressured to open a dialogue."