The Saffron Revolution
A remarkable image showing Burmese monks leading thousands of people in protests this weekend. They are demanding democratic reforms from a military dictatorship that has remained in power since it staged a coup in 1988 and subseuently suppressed pro-democracy demonstrations organised by Aung San Suu Kyi.
This month's pro-democracy protests are the largest in Burma since those demonstrations. Aung San Suu Kyi won a general election in 1990, but the junta ignored the results of the polls. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, but has spent 18 of the last 20 years in detention.
Some of the most poignant images in the current clergy-led demonstrations are the pictures of monks walking with their alms bowls turned upside down, facing the ground -- indicating their unwillingness to take anything the junta has to offer.
For more on this story:
Sunday Sequence duscussion of the protests, featuring a Burmese who was tortured for his pro-democracy work.
on the protests.
Comments
William
Are you sure it is accurate to describe Buddhist monks as clergy? Isn't that a Western, Christian term?
Will is right, as is the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔnews page, which is also using the term "clergy". The monks regard themselves as clergy, and nowadays buddhist monks use the title "Reverend" as well. It may be a westernisation but the monks have embraced it.
It is a truly amazing sight! I hope that the General's don't act with violence against the Monks.
Aung San Suu Kyi's story is very moving. She's one of many imprisoned for her political views.
Amnesty's report on Myanmar (Burma as the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ call it) makes interesting reading.
Spot the Orangemen
Could Northern Ireland be helping to arm the military dictatorship in Burma?
That's what Amnesty International fears, given the UK's lax arms export controls and the fact that at least two local companies help manufacture components or software which go into a type of attack aircraft believed to have been sold to Burma.
The local firms, named by Amnesty, are involved in the supply of engine control systems and ejector seats which are reportedly used in Chinese K-8 attack jets and sold on to Burma.
The Government - and, locally, OFMDFM - could do more than posture on Burma and actually tighten up the loophole-ridden controls that currently don't prevent UK-based companies, even if unwittingly, from helping to arm the dictators.
Full story and a link to the Amnesty report - Northern Ireland: Arming the World at:
The winning and defending of freedom from dictators is bought and paid for with blood, if not that of the local population, then someone's from the outside. America understood that in 1776 when it revolted against the cruel tyrant King George III of England. It was true then, it is true now. Sometimes the tyrants are so well armed, their grip so iron fisted, their actions so cruel and ruthless, the odds of a successful revolt so small that an outsider has to come in and do it for them. The United States of America has been the number one nation to play this role, to the horror of all would be tyrants whose minds are far more preoccupied with stability, peace, and exploitating the situation than freedom, even at the cost of eternal repression. In rare instances, far away or vast empires fall out of sheer exhaustion from their own weight, in Europe's case after two world wars, in the USSR's case after the cold war of economic attrition finally bankrupted it. But normally, violent revolution or an outside war of liberation is the only chance people have. It is ironic that having been liberated by America at great sacrifice to itself in money and blood in two world wars, much of Western Europe would deny the same to Iraqis at no cost to themselves, WMDs aside. That Iraqis have not been able to take advantage of the opportunity because of long surpressed seething internal religious hatred and outside determination to impose a new tyranny by Al Qaeda and Iran is also besides the point. Europe could not act even in the case of Serbia on its own doorstep, the last straw was an emergency call to President Clinton to act to save Kosovo under the auspices of NATO (how dumb of the US to not only get involved in Europe's own internal affairs but to subject its military targeting to prior approval by every other NATO government, a mistake I hope it never makes again.) So like Darfur, Ruwanda, and countelss others, the EU, the UN, and Probably NATO will fail to act in Burma. I expect a slaughter before it is all over. Western economic sanctions are a joke, the well armed Burmese generals who run the country have a steady flow of money from the sale of natural gas to China and Thailand. Were the US to act unilaterally, Europe would find one more reason to engage in its favorite sport, America bashing. So instead, we will likely watch a period of unchallenged human carnage. Well at least it will be a diversion from depressing news about Darfur.