A new contributor to The Nation’s stable of blogs calls herself Catch 22. In her first post she brands the BBC “irresponsible” for airing a documentary about the Free Burma Rangers that “will only inflame the [Burmese] regime further”. She also reflects that the Karen National Union leadership are “powerful cantankerous people” and that their armed struggle is “controlled by old rigid Generals”.
Of all the new Southeast Asia commentators who have come and gone over the past year I am struggling to remember a more provocative start.
On the topic of “inflaming the regime” Catch 22 writes that:
Of course, this is exactly what the Karen leaders want – inflame the regime, more atrocities, more fuel for our cause and more documentaries. And it is THEIR cause, because all other ethnic groups have signed a ceasefire.
I don’t want to be too pedantic (it is her first post, after all) but many other rebellions do continue inside Burma, and on its fringes. The Shan State Army (South) would certainly dispute the claim that all “all other ethnic groups have signed a ceasefire”.
…enough of my pedantry.
Catch 22 goes on to share Karen National Liberation Army tactics:
This is how the Karen insurgents operate. They find a remote Karen village, a poor but peaceful village. Just like the Burmese junta they then take it over, demanding food etc,for its ‘freedom fighters’ – not that the villagers know what a freedom fighter is! They then use the village as a base to carry out missions and from where to shell from. When they feel they have done enough damage to the junta they move on.
And finishes by proclaiming that:
In conclusion: Yes the Burmese military do have an awful human rights record. But they don’t care about sanctions or not being on the world stage – they haven’t been for 40 years and as I’ve said before they don’t care because China will prop them up. They certainly care about documentaries such a this one aired by BBC, inasmuch that it gives them yet another excuse to carry out rape, plunder and pilage.
When will we ever learn not to fuel a fire just for the personal interest of a TV station and some rebels who simply will not negotiate?
This is, without question, a rambunctious beginning to any new blog.
Of course, many New Mandala readers have knowledge of this part of the region and will have their own thoughts on Catch 22’s first contribution. As always, readers with their own ideas about the issues raised here are encouraged to join the conversation.
And, yes, she really does take aim at Annie Lennox, too.
10 responses so far ↓
1 Grasshopper // Jul 11, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Catch 22’s post read like Little Britain’s “YEAH BUT, NO BUT” skit. I don’t think she can be very old in order to have this very rigid view of how chess in national politics is played.
Regarding the BBC, they’ve been creating the news for a while now; why don’t we all simply receive raw data as news rather than biased and skewed information? Obviously any sane, rational person would much rather look at binary than get a daily fix of the ‘THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM WE(BRITISH) SCULPTED IS CRUMBLING” comedy routine!
2 Tara // Jul 12, 2007 at 3:57 am
Hmm…Grasshopper, I’m guessing Catch-22 is maybe, 22 years old? Although she looks more like 16 in that picture. It is an interesting approach though. I mean, for the last 100 years everyone has struggled to publicise human rights abuses in attempts to expose the perpetrators and incite some kind of action or aid. But, here, all along we’ve just been making it worse! Everyone should just lay low, keep their mouths shut, and hope that the junta just forgets they are even there.
The Free Burma Rangers are the ones who first started photographing and videotaping everything in order to show the outside world, though. Here the BBC is being blamed when the medics are clearly the irresponsible ones.
Does anyone else get tired of ‘cease-fire’ getting bandied about as if it actually means anything? Didn’t the KNU and the junta agree to a verbal ceasefire? As far as I can tell, cease-fires just mean increased militarization and all the negative that goes with it. It’s kind of meaningless in terms of actually providing any peace to civilians.
3 Richard // Jul 12, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Mannn, I spent the time reading this entire post (and comments) before I went to the link.
I just saw the words “The Nation” and “new contributor” in the first sentence and assumed we were talking about a journalist.
I am highly disappointed.
4 a reporter // Jul 12, 2007 at 7:05 pm
If I needed one more reason to stop reading the Nation, this could be it. Slandering the BBC makes a change from slandering Thaksin, I suppose. Is it any worse that the emotional diatribes that pass for opinion in the newspaper?
5 Tara // Jul 14, 2007 at 4:43 am
On a tangential note, I am currently making my way (slowly) through the book “A problem from hell: America and the age of genocide”. There was an anecdote about Elie Weisel, who was pushing for intervention in Bosnia, and some US State Department officials. He asked why they just don’t liberate one of the concentration camps, and the reply was basicllay, “We’re afraid if we liberate one that it cause a backlash and people in the camps will be killed”. Weisel’s reply was that that was exactly the excuse given in WWII for not liberating the Jewish concentration camps.
Not that different from this girl’s attitude about publicity causing backlash. Also not that different from the way people react to situations of prolonged domestic violence. Where did this attitude come from and why is it so pervasive?
6 Tara // Jul 14, 2007 at 4:45 am
Wow. I good grammar. Sorry.
7 jonfernquest // Jul 14, 2007 at 2:14 pm
If the generals suddenly disappeared and Burma had democracy, do activists really honestly believe that Burma’s problems (e.g. ethnic insurgencies) are going to end there?
Look at every other country in the region.
The Karen generals wanted an independent state of Kawthoolei in the middle of the jungle with a 95% malaria infection rate last time I was there.
And are they the only ethnic group in Burma that wants independence from the “Burmans” ?
Sudden “freedom” might in fact mean in the end “anarchy” and “violence”.
Western activists, scholars, journalists, who want to micromanage countries that they don’t even deign to look at very closely or fund much in the way of area studies in, why should I think that they have the solution to any problem in Burma.
They can’t even describe what’s happening there adequately!
**After they get democracy** it’s going to be a lot, lot more difficult than getting outraged and protesting or all holding hands in a circle and singing Koom Baa Yaa…..
8 Tara // Jul 16, 2007 at 9:21 am
Jon, I think a lot of activists and Burmese exiles are well aware of the issue you point out, which really gets to the heart of the matter doesn’t it? I have the same frustration when seeing the way the issue is typically represented, and I don’t doubt that many ethnic leaders are also missing this point. But, there are also a lot of young people (as well as older leaders) from Burma who do get it, and are focused on addressing this issue. No one ever hears about them, though.
9 jonfernquest // Jul 17, 2007 at 2:26 am
Overall there is not a lot of publicly available debate or engagement with the issues, not much balance, outrage being the usual analytical mode, so fear and predictable polemics are the result.
The news stories tend to repeat the same issues over and over, as if there weren’t some odd 47 million people, most of whose lives are more affected by the long-term isolationist policies and the economic sanctions, than human rights violations per se.
I know Zani who I met during the summer when I was at SEASSI several years ago, was trashed pretty harshly when he decided to engage with the government.
“But, there are also a lot of young people (as well as older leaders) from Burma who do get it, and are focused on addressing this issue. No one ever hears about them, though.”
Maybe they should blog or publish. How else will their views become known. Fresh blood, particularly non-elite, would be great. As David Mathieson observes of papers in a volume:
“..[papers] .that promise insight but deliver the same tired arguments, borrowed research and bland summations. …they have nothing new to report and read like graduate student literature reviews from 1992 than serious modern scholarship.”
But I don’t agree with him on this one:
“…When Steinberg refers to reports of “corvee labor,” by which I assume he means civilians herded at gunpoint and with threats of violence to build roads and clear land for the military, he must realize other people call this “forced labor.” His meticulously neutral terminology fails to address contending legitimacies among the country’s embattled ethnic nationalities.”
IMHO “Corvee labor” is not only appropriate way of conveying it. He certainly isn’t being an apologist. Articles that, for instance, describe the horrible work conditions in Mae Sot duty free manufacturing are absolutely necessary, like the recent Reuters article, but there are other dimensions to the problem, and the hyper-political correct stance that everything you say has to be about human rights violations, is counterproductive.
“Khin Zaw Win’s mercurial, anti-sanctions soap-boxing employs questionable economics, culturally deterministic nationalism (veering toward xenophobia) and pundit amateurism masquerading as authority.”
After decades of isolation and with all discourse being highly charged partisan polemics, you get what you ask for, of in the case of Soros, funded.
Burmese history itself, rather than repetitions of the same activist talking points, is possible when you dig into the historical sources a bit. Repetition is why people just forget and ignore Burma. They’ve read the same story a million times and grown numb to it. IMHO a lot more needs to be written about China’s relationship with Burma.
10 Tara // Jul 17, 2007 at 8:14 am
I don’t disagree with any of those points, Jon. Although, I think this has been the same scenario played out in other situations as well, to differing degrees. Ie. Cambodia, Bosnia, WWII, Darfur. Of course, the difference is that there is a more established framework for carrying out the theatre of publicising human rights abuses and NGOs with funding address them, some thing that has been developed over the course of the century. Of course there are individuals really and truly committed to helping, but they are up against a system that does not want to change, and a government committed to deflecting obligations.
I do wish that we could hear more voices from those doing constructive work on the ground. But, really, why should they have to? What does publishing their opinion or experiences for us to read and debate have to do with accomplishing their goals in relation to say, a health training or village development project inside Burma? What it boils down to is that it is not their responsibility to inform us. They are not exactly hiding, and it is not their fault that journos, flit about looking for the most ’sellable’ story, one easily digested by the West. (Or that Soros and other foundations operate the way they do, marginalizing certain groups from their support – I don’t see how they could necessarily fix that)
As for the government, if you’d like to see the US gov. portray the historical realities an complications of the situation, that’s easy. Just drum up some vocal public support for real intervention – and watch how it suddenly becomes an intractable ethnic conflict in which all sides are guilty, and which would be foolish to even try to get involved in because the situation is hopeless. At no point has consideration for actually helping people ever been a priority in the government’s policy on Burma, nor will it ever be.
There is definitely an over-abundance of journalists, and a deficiency of academics researching Burma and all the related issues.
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