Burma in the past was used to be known as the land of smiling people surrounded by un-spoilt natural beauty.

But now, things have changed very greatly. People can no longer smile because of the hardships in their daily life; rising inflations, meager incomes hardly enough for two square meals a day, and obligation to work as forced labourers in military’s construction projects. Moreover, they cannot smile because their once beautiful country and its natural environment is being destroyed by the regime’s excessive deforestation, damming of rivers, and reckless mining methods polluting soil and water with chemicals.

But there is surprisingly too little voice of complaint one can hear in Burma these days. Why? Have people become zombies? Or have they gone suddenly dumb?

In fact, people are still there alive. And they still can speak. But in the twenty-first century mediaeval society of Burma, people are cowed by fear. Shear terror and raw fear has made them suffer in silence.

Fear of arbitrary arrest by secret police. Fear of police brutality. Fear of spies everywhere. Fear of beatings in custody. Fear of burning with cheroot-tips. Fear of being electrocuted. Fear of being suffocated by wet-cloths wrapped all around the head. Fear of shin bones being broken with metal pipes. Fear of finger-nails being plucked out. Fear of being raped. Fear of retribution by collective punishment to the whole family.

Fear is numbing people’s sufferings. Fear is grinding down on their souls. Fear is slamming their mouths shut.

And if someone is brave enough to speak out, despite of the fears, against military authorities he will be thrown into jail immediately. If he is still dare enough to keep up his conscience, he will get a taste of all sorts of torture methods in jail. After that he will be punished with solitary confinement in a very small narrow dark gloomy bleak dirty wet and rat-infested cell for years and years until he breaks down both physically and mentally. And if he dies before finishing his prison sentence, his body will be immediately burnt to ashes by prison authorities without any post-mortem, to cover up all the scars and marks of torture he has received. The authorities usually refuse to give the remaining ashes of the prisoner to his family, to make sure that no memorial or no tomb-stone is made in honour of the political prisoner.

While democratic countries around the world are fighting war on terrorism, military regime in Burma is waging an endless brutal “war on conscience” to its own people.

They may silence the voice of people by clamping down on media. They may shut up people’s mouth by intimidation. They may lock up people’s lives behind bars.

But they cannot close down people’s mind. They can never seal the people’s conscience down under the shutters of fear.

Like ever lasting grassroots, people’s conscience will persist. Even though regime’s vicious and vile oppression on dissent can silence people’s voices, their conscience of knowing good and evil will remain for ever, and their resentment against the evilness of the regime will never fade out.

When one prisoner of conscience dies, from the ashes of his soul another hero of conscience will rise up. And the war of conscience will continue.