New Mandala

14 responses so far ↓

• 1 Brian V // Sep 29, 2007 at 4:52 am

  Let us hope for the sake of a free Burma, that some troops are beginning to fall away from those dictators so willing to ruthlessly destroy their own people. And let us hope for the sake of a free Burma, that people understand their lives can only be free if they act as one people and walk away as one people from the dictatorship. Even heartless, fat dictators cannot resist a statement made by all the people. Even fanatics with all the power fall when people decide to say, No more…
  Fill the streets with humanity saying NO….
  Burma is a wonderful country full of wonderful people who have suffered too long under the selfish yoke of slavery to miserable military thugs. Long live Aung San Suu Kyi who said to her fellow Burmese: “The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit” Fill the streets.

• 2 Grasshopper // Sep 29, 2007 at 12:10 pm

  I am in the habit of hoping falsely; hopefully this time it will not be in vain! It would be fantastic if confirmed!

• 3 editor // Sep 29, 2007 at 5:36 pm

  I think I must have received the same email as you with these reports. Unfortunately it looks like all the most recent media references to this issue is referencing this same, single, message. I hope that we’re able to get more reports one way or the other soon.

• 4 nganadeeleg // Sep 29, 2007 at 7:47 pm

  If true that could be good news.
  We all know the leaders of the junta are bad, but I have always wondered why soldiers seem to follow orders that are clearly wrong.

  I know there are some conscientious objectors, but are military recruiting & training processes so good that they are able to weed out freethinkers, so that they are mainly left with ‘professional soldiers’ who will serve blindly?
  (or possibly freethinkers just steer clear of the military in the first place – might be something to do with all that discipline & being trained to kill)

  BTW, that question applies to other armies, not just the Burmese (or Thai).

• 5 aiontay // Sep 29, 2007 at 8:27 pm

  Obvioulsy, the motivations of Burmese soldiers are complex, but one story I heard from a Canadian in one of the Karenni refugee camps might provide some explanation for their behavior. The Canadian was talking to four Burmese Army deserters that had deserted about a month previous. As he said, they were extremely nice guys, but in the course of their conversation, they started telling him all the atrocities they had committed. He was shocked, and asked them why they had done what they had done. They told him that originally there had been five of them, and being poor and without any job prospects, they had joined the army. The training was so brutal, one of them had deserted. He was caught, and his punishment was that he was beaten to death- by his friends. They had to do it, or they would be killed themselves. After that, they said they didn’t care what they did.

• 6 jonfernquest // Sep 29, 2007 at 9:17 pm

  Boycott of Olympics in China would be nice way to back words up with action.

  I’m really interested in seeing how ***honest and serious the EU and the US expressions of outrage actually are***. Not very serious in the past. Momentary outrage and then forget about the place and allow its population to simmer in economic sanctions.

  Healthcare, for instance, is one area where the place is ante-diluvian. Whatever happens, let’s pray it happens quick, because after a certain interval people will just zone out, and we’ll be back to another 20 years of mindnumbing platitudes while the country falls further and further behind and the lives of people get worse and worse and worse.

• 7 jonfernquest // Sep 29, 2007 at 10:08 pm

  Contrast Bush “calling on all civilised nations” with the latest business (as usual) news:

  “Chevron’s interest in the Yadana project is “a long-term commitment that helps meet the critical energy needs of millions in people in the region,” said Nicole Hodgson, corporate media adviser for Asia.”

  Or:

  “The Chinese prefer to separate business and politics,” said Kuen-Wook Paik, an energy analyst at Chatham House, a think tank in London. “They want to take a neutral stance. They don’t want to risk the relationship with the Myanmar authorities.”

  [Express the appropriate emotional response at the appropriate time and then, after a decent interval, turn around and be a hypocrit.]

  http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/apwire/D8RV1BE03.htm

• 8 Grasshopper // Sep 30, 2007 at 12:17 am

  Boycotting the Olympics would only increase polarity in the international arena. Surely more international polarity is not good for Burma in the long term because it does not provide a united front for confrontation of the Junta and instead plays into their pocket because we present them with lots of options to be manipulated.

  Burma’s drug racketeering and ’spreading HIV’ is not a sufficient international threat to have a UNSC resolution. How is it a threat when it seems that a good proportion of Westerners are happy to continue buying their drugs? Maybe the threat is social disintegration in the West… because clearly we must have our self-indulgent hallucinations of love or power.

  Now everyones second sentence includes Burma/Myanmar. One might say this is not a bad thing, but it now simply becomes another issue for everybody pretending to be an international relations theorist to poke at rather than to simply observe the beauty of what might take place. Nobody can ever let anything be it seems, and this includes the national self determination of Burma. Just because self determination is used by the Junta to re-enforce their stranglehold on power does not make it an issue of irrelevance post-Junta. Especially with neo-colonial perceptions that have been imposed on so many people. Imagine if everyone in Cabramatta were told that Toohey’s was not really that important.

  China’s foreign policy is non-interference to ensure stability. The demonisation of China by so many people is sickening. AS LIBERALS WE SHOULD NOT JUDGE THE ACTION OF A FEW TO BE REPRESENTATION OF ACTION FROM A WHOLE NATION. Yet with the language being used we are doing it. Why? Because we do not understand. We do not understand we are not really liberals and we don’t even see that we jump when mass media inadvertently tells us too. Furthermore, because the CCP is to the outside, enigmatic and semi-autocratic does not mean that people in China are devoid of free will. It is the same here in the West.

  Why can’t we start referring to Chinese corrupt officials themselves as we do in the West? I won’t criticize every American for fire bombing Cambodia, I will criticize Kissinger. We can afford this respect to our ‘own’ liberal kind, but not Chinese? Why? Because ‘they’ don’t afford it to us? Oh.

  If you really want to understand rather than have a whole nation to define your goodness and ‘freedom’ against, please take Mandarin 101.

• 9 lotus_in_the_hills // Sep 30, 2007 at 1:01 pm

  So much of what has been coming out of Burma for the past two days is hazy, but too terrifying to discount. I am reminded of how, during the years of the Khmer Rouge, no one wanted to believe the accounts coming out of Khmer refugee camps in Thailand because they were just too awful to fathom. We know for a fact that there are monastery lock-downs, so how are monks getting food? What is happening to detained protesters, both lay and monastic? The junta could be doing anything to them behind closed doors (isn’t detaining them in an of itself a gross violation of international law?). Is the death toll 10 or 200? I hope Ibrahim Gambari is able to get accurate information about of the current situation, but I think it’s a given that the junta will do everything in its power to deceive him.

• 10 James Haughton // Oct 2, 2007 at 12:15 pm

  Of course, given the media feedback loops these days, widespread reports that troops were defecting might in itself cause division and defection even if the initial reports are unconfirmed.

• 11 Brian // Oct 2, 2007 at 3:29 pm

  Posted by Lotus_in_the_hills: “We know for a fact that there are monastery lock-downs, so how are monks getting food? What is happening to detained protesters, both lay and monastic?”

  And because among the common folk of Burma, the poorest of the poor come to the monastery to get what the monks do not consume, what becomes of those hungry poor? The social order is brutally disrupted, not by accident but as a lesson to all.

• 12 Sidh S. // Oct 3, 2007 at 12:15 am

  Good points Grasshopper. It must be quite hard, as you mentioned before, mitigating the ‘neo-colonial’ line of thinking.

  Although I think pressuring China and India is practical to dealing with the problem at hand (end the violence). They are the only external governments/neighbors that seem to have some influence on the Burmese junta (as the other neighbor, Thailand is naturally ignored for the historical baggage; for hosting anti-junta activists; and although the remmitance sent home by the million+ Burmese workers in Thailand must be quite economically significant, it probably does not benefit the junta).

  What are the options for the Burma Junta? Becoming totally shut off like N.Korea? This is difficult as they are despised both internationally and by their people (probably more so now since the crack down on Buddhist monks). A ‘positive’ turn of events could be some ‘freethinking’ elements in the armed forces (if they are any – as I’ve just learnt they are internally trained and have minimal contact with the outside world), seeing the situation as a clear dead end, stage a coup against the ruling generals and establish dialogue, negotiate power-sharing arrangement with the democratic and ethnic oppositions. The danger could be a civil war (with no guaranteed result).

  Or maybe, the US, to make some amends for Iraq, park a carrier fleet in the Andaman Sea to add military pressure (as economic sanctions clearly failed). The Chinese government will not be happy either but the Burmese Junta just might capitulate?

  (I am probably dreaming – but trying to be ‘practical’ at the same time)

• 13 jonfernquest // Oct 3, 2007 at 7:34 pm

  Grasshopper: “Boycotting the Olympics would only increase polarity in the international arena.”

  Exactly. Everything has a value.

  If you want to find the value of a life under 30 baht healthcare.
  Take someone in a coma and see if 30 baht pays for an oxygen tank.
  Everything has a value and…

  The value ***the international community places on change in Burma is low*** despite all the big words.

  I raised the issue to point out the gap between words and action.

  Read a good New York Times article that points out this difference.

  Sidh: “What are the options for the Burma Junta? Becoming totally shut off like N.Korea?”

  Good point. I have been against economic sanctions for 10 years because they hurt Burmese people, making it even more difficult for them to survive economically and was repeatedly called a “Nazi” for having this view by activist friends, but I honestly believe that if the Burmese economy had been restricted in this way over the last 20 years since 1988 Burma would be a much different place than it is today and change would have eventually happened, maybe even Aung San Suu-kyi would be prime minister by now. This is what happened to South Korea under Kim Dae-Chung.

• 14 The Irrawaddy on tension within tatmadaw ranks // Oct 9, 2007 at 7:57 pm

  [...] in late September, at the height of the uprising across Burma, I posted an “unconfirmed report” about certain Light Infantry Divisions in Rangoon and Mandalay that had defied orders to [...]

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