“Go Ahead, Beat the Monks and Kill the People”

_ Prof. Kanbawza Win

            “Go Ahead, Beat up the Monks, Disrobe and put them into Jail and Kill all the People that dares to demonstrate but allow us to exploit your natural and human resources,” is the clear unwritten message that the international community is giving to the Burmese Generals. None of this message can be seen in any of the media, electronic or printed, or even uttered by anybody else but it was given rather by the actions of the governments rather than by words.

            As per se President Sarkozy of France invited Dr Sein Win, who had to fly all the way from Washington to Paris, just to tell him that France will not make any new investment, when it was France, the first country in Europe, which has invested most in Burma? Every body knows that TOTAL gas pipe line is indirectly encouraging the human rights violations. Its chairman at an interview with the French Press has admitted that it has to give nearly 400 million dollars annually to the Burmese Junta, just for the sake of extracting oil in Burma and these money are used to shore up the hated Burmese army (read the Earth Rights reports). This does not include the “Hush, Hush” laundering of narco dollars for the Junta. Any Intelligent Burmese, sees that calling the titular head of the Burmese opposition in Diaspora is only for home consumption of getting a good image in front of the French people, just to prove that he is a good guy, always on the side of the persecuted people of the world and sending the sly signal to vote him in the next election? What an irony to exploit the suffering of the Burmese people to its own advantage without giving a helping hand?

            The current French Administration wants the world to construe that it’s Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, the founder of Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and Medicins du Monde (MDM) is very much sympathetic to the Burmese people when he wrote a preface of a book “Dossier Noir Birmanie”   

            “À ces questions, la réponse du prix Nobel Mgr Desmond Tutu est sans détour : il

             faut imposer à la junte birmane des sanctions économiques, tout comme la communauté internationale le fit il y a quelques années à l’encontre du régime        d’apartheid d’Afrique du Sud avec résultats positifs que l’on constate aujourd’hui.”

            But the irony was that before becoming the supremo of the French Foreign Ministry, he was hired by TOTAL to write a report of the accusations of human rights violation pertaining to the construction of the gas pipe line from Burma to Thailand, and the obvious conclusion was that all are rosy and no human rights violation occurred, whatever because of TOTAL. And now he is shouting again for TOTAL to withdraw. What hypocrisy for a Burmese who also have the knowledge that he was the governor of Kosovo and was partly responsible for orchestrating for the mass massacre there. This does not include the indirect French involvement in the Rawanda Massacre nor encouraging the French to visit Burma by running a full advertisement in the French papers just to cover up the latest atrocities. It is, but a short narrative of a major EU country indirect involvement in the Burmese tragedy and if one were to write about each and every country in the Western world there will be no space.

            The people of Burma know that the dictatorial countries of China and Russia are bereft of sympathetic ears and by nature will always side with the dictators expect no mercy from them. But the Burmese do harbor some sort of solace from the West and the UN. The massacre in Burma has once again prove to be a classic case, where a preventive diplomacy stood with folded arms as there is no process, no mechanism, by which the international community can initiate conflict resolution in Burma, to prevent another massacre like  in 1988 when hundreds and thousands were gun down in cold blood by the Burmese army. The regime is totalitarian, so it doesn’t have ready mechanisms for consultation or problem solving. Their usual solution is to apply force and the presence of a UN team of some kind would have some sort of a calming effect.

            We also have to recollect that in real life, most interventions take place without a UN mandate, if only because consensus is not always possible. The Tanzanian army marched into Uganda and destroyed Idi Amin’s despicable regime without any UN mandate. However, almost no one was prepared to lament the demise of the “Big Giant”. Without the Vietnamese army marching into Phnom Penh to dislodge the murderous Khmer Rouge, Cambodia would have spent many more years of bloody savagery. Outside intervention was also necessary to end the tragedy of “ethnic-cleansing” in Bosnia-Herzegovina and to save the Muslim majority in Kosovo from extermination. Sierra Leone and Liberia were also saved from possible extinction as nations thanks to the deus ex machina of foreign troops.

            Why is Uncle Sam, too frightening to contemplate a US-led intervention in Burma and capitalize on the good look when all the people of Burma are yearning for it? This will also prevent the accusation that the Americans had invaded the wrong country because of oil. The unfolding crisis in Burma offers America a golden opportunity after four years of bad news from Iraq and Afghanistan. The popular uprising in a hungry land is sure to welcome the American G Is as savior provided they don’t stay long. It should set up the already popular elected party of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and get out. Now, the ostensibly American values of freedom, democracy and perhaps even capitalist development have all gone to the drain in the eyes of the world.

            By sending Gambari to Burma indicate that the UN is always a late comer – like police appearing, when the shooting already died down, just to pick up the corpses. Rawanda and Sebrenica are some hard facts of UN impotency and Burma is the same. In an increasingly connected and aware world, it should be possible to rein in repulsive regimes like the self appointed Burmese Junta, there is no reason to rule out force, and if it is the only language they understand and stop the appalling and distressing events that people around the world are witnessing today in Burma.

            It is an unpleasant fact that when the most hideous governments begin to slaughter its own citizens, the world is united in words but not in action. As the authorities in Rangoon continue to beat, shoot and arrest monks and innocent bystanders the world looks on, the UNSC keeps on debating. The country today stands naked to the world, without a single country or prominent leader standing to defend the Burmese actions and yet China and Russia are adamant to prevent anything to stop the tragedy. It is really a sad debacle to see that the United Nations, the superpowers, Burma’s neighbors and its business partners all are unwilling to act in any manner that could turn the Burmese government from barbaric to humane.

            Because of the laissez-faire attitude, it is unfortunate that in the past 20 years, the Burmese dictators have grown so confident that they are able to smile at UN condemnation, truncheon the monks, kill their own citizens, and deliberately shoot foreign correspondence, who dares to report. There is no apology, no explanation and no accountability. The Burmese people are asking for outside help because they fear mass extermination like the scale of the Sudan, Rwanda, Congo and Cambodia. Like Rwanda’s Intrahamwe militia that led the ethnic cleaning with machetes, the Burmese government backed thugs of Swan-Arr-Shin are killing monks and students now in detention centers

 In essence, Burmese authorities are hiding behind the rules followed by civilized nations in order to protect their own barbarism while the two veto wielding powers of Russia and China in the Security Council are indirectly encouraging it by preventing a consensus for concrete action. What is more distressing is India has decided to hold its nose and do business with a detested regime suspected of involvement in a drug trade that is harming thousands of Indians.

            After half a century of harsh military rule, in various pretexts and trying all sorts of ways, both violent and non violent means, to overthrow the yoke of the cruel Burmese army, the people of Burma are now looking to the international community, especially to the West and UN for help. The UN should be strongly appealing to world leaders, financial houses, businesses and the media to lend their weight to solve the chronic Burmese problem. If military force is the only alternative to unseat the Burmese regime, the international community with UN and US at its head should seriously considered it.