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faceless
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Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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 Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2007 12:09 pm Post subject: Situation in Myanmar / Burma |
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I see that Bush is condemning the government there - with his 'sincerity' oozing through the TV screen like shite through a sieve. The BBC are condemning the police for attacking the crowds with batons - strange how they so rarely mention that when British or American police do exactly the same thing.
All the best to the protestors though - hopefully their strength and determination will be a beacon to others who are sick of their government. I heard one commentator today saying that some of the monks have been marching for 9 days, causing their feet to bleed. That's dedication for sure. |
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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| Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2007 12:19 pm Post subject: |
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i'd been waiting for trouble to kick off ... i'd read this the other day
| Quote: | Burma regime planning to infiltrate demonstrations to spark violence
24 Sep 2007
Burma Campaign UK sources in Rangoon have reported that soldiers have been
ordered to shave their heads, in possible preparation for infiltrating
peaceful demonstrations. They would start rioting or attacking police,
providing the regime with a pretext for a brutal crackdown on protestors.
Sources indicate that soldiers from Light Battalion 77 in Rangoon have been
given the order. Sources also report that the regime has ordered 3,000
monks’ robes from a factory in Rangoon.
It is a tactic the regime has used in the past, including at the Depayin
massacre in 2003, during which Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested. Regime militia
dressed as monks were involved in the ambush which left up to 100 democracy
activists dead. State television today reported that action would be taken
against protestors.
“We know from experience that the regime is capable of opening fire on
civilians,” said Mark Farmaner, acting Director of Burma Campaign UK. “The
regime came to power on the back of a massacre in 1988 that left at least
3,000 civilians dead. They have also been accused by the UN of breaking the
Geneva Convention for their deliberate targeting of civilians in attacks on
ethnic minorities.”
Despite the widespread expectations that the regime will use violence to
suppress protest, the international community has been remarkably silent,
with the French government being the only one to make a strong statement
warning of consequences if the regime responds with violence. ASEAN has also
expressed concern.
“The regime has been held in check by the peoples’ respect for the monks and
the fact that the world is watching, but the scale of protests means they
will be looking for options that allow them to justify a crackdown,”said
Mark Farmaner. “The UN Secretary General and other world leaders must speak
out and make it clear that a violent response in unacceptable. At the moment
the international community seems to be willing to watch from the sidelines
as the regime moves closer to a massacre. If the regime does attack
protestors, this will have been one of the most widely predicted massacres
in recent history, and makes a mockery any government’s claim to be
committed to human rights.” |
from http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/pm/weblog.php?id=P278
although this article got me thinking ...
| Quote: | The Buddhism bomb
Burma's leaders know that suppressing protesting monks could blow up in their faces.
By David I. Steinberg
September 25, 2007
The passive, otherworldly image of Buddhism can be misleading. In Burma, where two-thirds of the country is Buddhist, the religion has an overwhelming influence on day-to-day life and plays a continuing political role that makes the current protest marches by tens of thousands of monks through the streets of Yangon especially significant.
Buddhism has long been one of the key ingredients of Burmese nationalism, and it has been used by political leaders of all stripes as a source of legitimacy. To be in the top leadership of the military or the government requires public acceptance of the Buddhist faith. Indeed, the two most volatile elements in Burmese society, from the government's perspective, are the monks and students because they are respected moral forces. If the government represses them, it does so at its peril.
The military junta that runs Burma, known as Myanmar under the regime, is well aware of this, and it has been measured in its response to the protests, so far. The demonstrations began Aug. 19 after the government raised fuel prices, and on Sunday, the largest protests yet were held. About 10,000 monks marched through the streets of Yangon (and other cities across the country), shouting their solidarity with jailed democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and waving banners (including one that read "Love and kindness must win over everything").
There have been few public protests by monks in the last decade and a half. But before that, their protests against various governments go back to colonial times. When the British conquered Burma in the Third Anglo-Burmese War (1885-86), they eliminated the role of the leader of the Buddhist clergy, the Supreme Patriarch, thus destroying the organizational cohesiveness of the faith.
But they couldn't ban the religion itself, and even without an organized leadership, Buddhism remained a powerful force. The inroads of Christianity in administration and education -- a result of the British influence -- caused a Buddhist backlash, and monks became martyrs, dying in British jails for the cause of independence and Buddhism.
Buddhism has been used politically in the civilian and military administrations ever since. Civilian Prime Minister U Nu, a devout Buddhist, used Buddhism to win the 1960 elections by promising to make it the state religion. Every king and every leader (including those in the military) has built pagodas as symbols of faith. U Nu built the Peace Pagoda in the early 1950s; Gen. Ne Win built one in the years that followed, as has every military leader since. Such acts not only indicate personal devotion but add legitimacy for the government.
Devout images of the leadership are ubiquitous. Virtually every day in the official newspaper, a senior military official is depicted making some act of homage to the monks and showing respect for the religion. The military has assiduously attempted to demonstrate its unwavering support of Buddhism. There is certainly some element of belief in all this, but also perhaps a concern about the potential ability of the religious leadership to help stir up dissent.
Since 1988, the Buddhist hierarchy has been strictly controlled by the government, and what is taught in Buddhist schools has been carefully regulated. But such control does not reach down to the individual monasteries or younger monks, many of whom have been demonstrating in the last few days.
The junta recognizes the potential of the monks to inflame popular opinion against the regime. In 1990, the uniformed army brutally suppressed a protest by hundreds of monks in Mandalay, arresting and defrocking some and shutting down monasteries, but the reaction to the most recent events has been notably different. The government has not (at least not yet) directly used military personnel in uniform to suppress the demonstrators, although there are charges it may have used soldiers in mufti and civilian members of the Union Solidarity and Development Assn. (the military's mass mobilization organization) to do so.
The junta could easily suppress these demonstrations by force -- but in doing so it could terribly damage the image of the military, both within Burma and internationally. The government is perfectly aware that the demonstrations, while important, are unlikely to topple the military regime -- unless the government reacts in the wrong way.
The fact is that there will eventually be change in Burma, but when it comes, it likely will emerge from elements within the military worried that the image of the institution will be irrevocably damaged. Years of political and economic frustration have spawned a situation in which even a small event could spark that powder keg.
David I. Steinberg is a professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a visiting senior research scholar at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. |
from http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-steinberg25sep25,0,3726538.story?coll=la-tot-opinion&track=ntottext
pilger has some articles about burma over the years http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=15 although i haven't read any yet, it would be nice to understand whats happening in some historical context and what western powers are interested in ... |
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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| Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 12:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Only now, the full horror of Burmese junta's repression of monks emerges
By Rosalind Russell
Published: 11 October 2007
Monks confined in a room with their own excrement for days, people beaten just for being bystanders at a demonstration, a young woman too traumatised to speak, and screams in the night as Rangoon's residents hear their neighbours being taken away.
Harrowing accounts smuggled out of Burma reveal how a systematic campaign of physical punishment and psychological terror is being waged by the Burmese security forces as they take revenge on those suspected of involvement in last month's pro-democracy uprising.
The first-hand accounts describe a campaign hidden from view, but even more sinister and terrifying than the open crackdown in which the regime's soldiers turned their bullets and batons on unarmed demonstrators in the streets of Rangoon, killing at least 13. At least then, the world was watching.
The hidden crackdown is as methodical as it is brutal. First the monks were targeted, then the thousands of ordinary Burmese who joined the demonstrations, those who even applauded or watched, or those merely suspected of anti-government sympathies.
"There were about 400 of us in one room. No toilets, no buckets, no water for washing. No beds, no blankets, no soap. Nothing," said a 24-year-old monk who was held for 10 days at the Government Technical Institute, a leafy college in northern Rangoon which is now a prison camp for suspected dissidents. The young man, too frightened to be named, was one of 185 monks taken in a raid on a monastery in the Yankin district of Rangoon on 28 September, two days after government soldiers began attacking street protesters.
"The room was too small for everyone to lie down at once. We took it in turns to sleep. Every night at 8 o'clock we were given a small bowl of rice and a cup of water. But after a few days many of us just couldn't eat. The smell was so bad.
"Some of the novice monks were under 10 years old, the youngest was just seven. They were stripped of their robes and given prison sarongs. Some were beaten, leaving open, untreated wounds, but no doctors came."
On his release, the monk spoke to a Western aid worker in Rangoon, who smuggled his testimony and those of other prisoners and witnesses out of Burma on a small memory stick.
Most of the detained monks, the low-level clergy, were eventually freed without charge as were the children among them. But suspected ringleaders of the protests can expect much harsher treatment, secret trials and long prison sentences. One detained opposition leader has been tortured to death, activist groups said yesterday. Win Shwe, 42, a member of the National League for Democracy, the party of the detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, has died under interrogation, the Thai-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said, adding that the information came from authorities in Kyaukpandawn township. "However, his body was not sent to his family and the interrogators indicated that they had cremated it instead." Win Shwe was arrested on the first day of the crackdown.
It was the russet-robed Buddhist clergy, not political groups, who had formed the backbone of demonstrations during days of euphoric defiance and previously undreamed-of hope that Burma's military regime could be brought down by peaceful revolution. That hope has been crushed under the boots of government soldiers and intelligence agents and replaced by fear and dread.
A young woman, a domestic worker in Rangoon, described how one woman bystander who applauded the monks was rounded up. "My friend was taken away for clapping during the demonstrations. She had not marched. She came out of her house as the marchers went by and, for perhaps 30 seconds, smiled and clapped as the monks chanted. Her face was recorded on a military intelligence camera. She was taken and beaten. Now she is so scared she won't even leave her room to come and talk to me, to anyone."
Another Rangoon resident told the aid worker: "We all hear screams at night as they [the police] arrive to drag off a neighbour. We are torn between going to help them and hiding behind our doors. We hide behind our doors. We are ashamed. We are frightened."
Burmese intelligence agents are scrutinising photographs and video footage to identify demonstrators and bystanders. They have also arrested the owners of computers which they suspect were used to transmit images and testimonies out of the country. For each story smuggled out to The Independent, someone has risked arrest and imprisonment.
Hein Zay Kyaw (not his real name) received a telephone call last week telling him to be at a government compound where the military were releasing 42 people, among them Mr Kyaw's friend, missing since he was plucked from the edge of a demonstration on 26 September. Mr Kyaw told the aid worker: "The prisoners were let out of the trucks. Even though now they were safe, they were still so scared. They walked with their hands shielding their faces as if they were expecting blows. They were lined up in rows and sat down against the wall, still cowering. Their clothes were dirty, some stained with blood. Our friend had a clean T-shirt on. We were relieved because we thought this meant that he had not been beaten. We were wrong. He had been beaten on the head and the blood had soaked his shirt which he carried in a plastic bag."
The United States yesterday threatened unspecified new sanctions against Burma and called for an investigation into the death of Win Shwe.
White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in a statement: "The junta must stop the brutal treatment of its people and peacefully transition to democracy or face new sanctions from the United States."
The scale of the crackdown remains undocumented. The regime has banned journalists from entering Burma and has blocked internet access and phone lines.
Mark Farmaner of the Burma Campaign UK says the number of dead is possibly in the hundreds. "The regime covers up its atrocities. We will never know the true numbers," he said.
At the weekend the government said it has released more than half of the 2,171 people arrested, but exile groups estimate the number of detentions between 6,000 and 10,000.
In Rangoon, people say they are more frightened now than when soldiers were shooting on the streets.
"When there were demonstrations and soldiers on the streets, the world was watching," said a professional woman who watched the marchers from her office.
"But now the soldiers only come at night. They take anyone they can identify from their videos. People who clapped, who offered water to the monks, who knelt and prayed as they passed. People who happened to turn and watch as they passed by and their faces were caught on film. It is now we are most fearful. It is now we need the world to help us." |
from http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3047606.ece |
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faceless
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Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 2:20 pm Post subject: |
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Burmese Court Sentences Comedian-Activist to 45 Years in Prison
By VOA News
21 November 2008
A court in military-ruled Burma has sentenced a popular comedian and pro-democracy activist to 45 years in prison. Three associates and a Buddhist monk also received lengthy sentences. Authorities detained Maung Thura -- known by his stage name, Zarganar -- earlier this year after he organized private aid deliveries to victims of Cyclone Nargis. He was sentenced Friday for violating the Electronics Act, which regulates all forms of electronic communication. He still faces additional charges.
The court also sentenced three of Zarganar's associates. A prominent sports journalist, Zaw Thet Htwe, and a video journalist, Thant Zin Aung, were each sentenced Friday to 15 years behind bars, and another man, Tin Maung Aye, was jailed for 29 years. Also Friday, Burmese authorities sentenced a monk, Ashin Gambira, who led pro-democracy protests last year on additional charges, bringing his total jail time to 68 years.
In other news, the United States announced that a senior U.S. diplomat will be traveling to Asia early next month for talks on Burma. Ambassador Scot Marciel will meet with Southeast Asian officials in Singapore and with Japanese officials in Tokyo. Western nations and human rights groups have condemned the wave of sentences and called for the release of the activists at least 100 activists sentenced to lengthy prison terms in recent weeks.
Last week, 23 members of the opposition 88 Generation Students group were sentenced to up to 65 years in prison for organizing anti-government protests. Others sentenced include monks, poets, and some 70 members of the opposition National League for Democracy party headed by detained Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
So far, all of the sentences and trials have taken place in prison, where the dissidents are being held. Several of the activists' defense lawyers have been jailed while trying to defend their clients.
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fucking hell - that's harsh sentencing. |
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Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Wed May 18, 2011 4:46 pm Post subject: |
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