While your attention was turned to the war on terror, a truly terrifying government has remained in power in a nation cut off from the rest of the world. In Burma, fear is the only way of life. Just because we have largely ignored this in America does not make it any less true.
Renowned author Barbara Victor brought Burma to center stage at NEIU with the tale of her visit to the country and her biography of Burma’s true leader Aung San Suu Kyi, at this year’s Asian Heritage Conference.
In the crowd were victims of the ruling junta’s lust for power; journalists, artists and everyday citizens forced to flee their native land in fear for their lives. Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner is under house arrest in Burma.
The people of Burma know the government that rules their land is powerful, vicious and unjust. They have endured the military junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), for 19 years, and conditions before SLORC weren’t much better.
Suu Kyi realizes the nature of the behemoth: “It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.”
We would be wise to turn our attention to a corner of the world where democracy is little more than a hope, drifting in the winds of a beautiful land where terror is the only ideology employed by the government and where the people subsist on what is left to them after runaway military spending.
The Burmese people are starving, outgunned, outraged and no match for the sophisticated and brutal military that rules their land. Some quarters think sanctions will help isolate and hamper the SLORC. The Burmese people don’t have time to wait for the uncertain results of sanctions.
Sanctions take time, patience and years to make an impact, if they do at all. If we remember our history, sanctions against Iraq during the 1990’s only hurt the people, not the government.
Barbara Victor, who knows more than most outsiders about Burma, wants foreign companies who do business with Burma to face pressure to reconsider that stance. Those corporations may have a better chance of forcing change than dialogue with the SLORC, who have no desire for a peaceful solution.
Calling for engagement with the SLORC assumes you can negotiate with the devil himself. The totalitarian’s talking points begin at the barrel of a gun. The Burmese people need more than engagement, but if history is any indication, they’re already on their own.
The United States and the West in have a recent track record of being very picky about when to protest or stop the abuse of human beings. Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, East Timor, all situations that rapidly deteriorated and became mass slaughters before the West lifted a finger.
Genocide is the bare minimum necessary to elicit more than a whisper from the West. Merely being brutalized and denied democracy gets you but a brief mention in the agenda of the United Nations nowadays.
Perhaps the West should establish a body count, give the Burmese a number: how many of their people have to die, or be detained, tortured, treated like so much human cattle, before the ‘civilized nations’ of this earth step in? If Iraq screams for democracy and freedom, than Burma cannot beg for it anymore from the highest mountaintop.
The Burmese people will probably have to go this one alone. The West will tread water with sanctions and/or ‘engagement,’ while the people of Burma are worked at forced labor camps, unjustly imprisoned, and denied basic human rights at every turn.
The only option left for the Burmese is to stand and fight. Waiting for the United States, France, Britain or any other western power to ride to the rescue will only result in more suffering.
The true people of Burma will have to decide for themselves if, as Malcolm X once said, “they would rather die on their feet than live on their knees.”
The world will not save the Burmese people, they must save themselves. They are already suffering inhuman treatment and death. They must decide if this slow death is any life at all, or whether they will stand and fight, no matter the odds.