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Lancer
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Oregon Coast, USA! or Bohol, Philippines!
Apr 1999
time: 05:36
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Burma, not just a 5 letter word, now it's a thread in an effort to fill a deeper need in our pal che.
So, how about them Burmese?
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GePap
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of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:36
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An article form Today's NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/19/i...19myanmar.html?
quote:
Test of Wills: the Burmese Captive Who Will Not Budge
By SETH MYDANS
International Herald Tribune
Published: June 19, 2005
BANGKOK, June 18 - Seventeen years ago, as the people of Myanmar filled the streets in mass protests against their military dictatorship, a striking, self-possessed woman rose to address a rally at the great golden Shwedagon Pagoda. At the time, nobody realized the price she would pay for her outspokenness.
The woman, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, was visiting from her home in England to tend to her sick mother when pro-democracy protests swelled throughout the country in August 1988 despite a brutal response by the military that took thousands of lives.
In the months that followed she emerged, through a combination of charisma and pedigree, to lead what has so far been a futile opposition to the country's military leaders.
On Sunday, Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi will mark her 60th birthday under house arrest, where she has spent most of the intervening years, in an increasingly dilapidated house, more cut off than ever from contacts outside her weed-filled compound.
Her birthday has become an occasion for new international protests against a military junta that holds the country in its grip, jailing its opponents while ruining the country's economy and waging war against its ethnic minorities.
From one of the region's most refined and richly endowed nations, Myanmar has become its most desperate and reviled.
As the daughter of the country's founding hero, U Aung San, she held a nearly mystical appeal for people desperate to regain their freedoms and self-respect. With her dignity, self-sacrifice and perseverance, she has created a legend of her own.
She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and has joined the company of Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama of Tibet as international icons of a struggle for freedom. But in a contest between brute force and principle, between repression and the clearly expressed will of the people of Myanmar, it is the men with the guns who have managed so far to prevail, and the country's moral symbol who is their prisoner.
Calls for the release of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi have come from around the world in recent days, including statements from Washington and from Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations.
In Norway, the chairman of the Nobel Committee, Ole D. Mjoes, issued a rare statement about a past laureate, saying; "We ask that she be set free immediately. We look forward to the day that democracy again rules her country."
But the generals have released her twice already, most recently in May 2002, only to be shaken and shamed at her continuing, overwhelming popularity: huge crowds that gathered wherever she appeared.
One year after her last release, her convoy was attacked by an organized mob in what some analysts believe was an attempt to kill her, and she was returned to house arrest after a period of harsh treatment in prison.
"She has become the only leader that the Burmese people have acknowledged since the death of her father in 1947," said Josef Silverstein, an expert on Myanmar at Rutgers University. "I would add that she has in every way possible emulated what her father stood for, which was for the right of the people to govern themselves and to have a free and democratic country."
Shortly after her address at the Shwedagon Pagoda, she explicitly assumed her father's mantle, saying she would dedicate her life to the people of her country as he had done.
She made that clear in 1999 when she chose not to visit her husband, Michael Aris, in England, when he was dying of cancer, because she feared that the government would bar her from re-entering Myanmar. The Myanmar authorities had refused to allow him to visit her.
The United States, the European Union and other nations have responded to repression in Myanmar with economic penalties that have done little to affect its leadership. Myanmar's giant neighbors, China and India, with several other Asian nations, offer it an economic lifeline.
But opposition from the West is putting pressure on the junta now as it prepares to take over the rotating leadership of the regional 10-member political and economic grouping, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, next year.
The United States and some other nations have hinted strongly in recent weeks that they will boycott an annual meeting to which they are invited if it is held in Myanmar. Its regional neighbors, facing potential embarrassment, are beginning to press the junta to skip its turn as regional leader if it does not release Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi and improve its record on human rights.
At the same time, there has been an eruption of internal turmoil among the ruling generals, though like most things in Myanmar its details and its causes are unclear.
In October, Prime Minister Khin Nyunt, who was the head of military intelligence and one of the country's most powerful leaders, was fired and placed under house arrest. His trial on expected corruption charges has either begun or is about to begin, according to conflicting reports.
Over the years, as repression has continued in Myanmar, some of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi's allies abroad have complained about what they call her stubbornness and intransigence. But it is the military leaders who have several times switched track, ignoring her and vilifying her, opening and closing dialogues, freeing and rearresting her.
She has also been criticized for demanding that the government recognize the results of a parliamentary election in 1990 that was won overwhelmingly by her party, the National League for Democracy.
The remarkably open parliamentary election was a characteristic misjudgment by the junta, which had apparently expected to win. When Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi's party won more than 80 percent of the seats, the generals refused to recognize the results and clung to power.
Many who won seats were arrested. Bit by bit over the years the junta has whittled away at their party. Today its leaders are aging - Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi is the youngest - and its youth wing has atrophied.
More and more, the democratic opposition to military rule in Myanmar is personified by one isolated and determined woman. "Her stubbornness is her strength," Mr. Silverstein said. "This woman will not bend and will not break." |
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Lancer
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Oregon Coast, USA! or Bohol, Philippines!
Apr 1999
time: 05:36
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Should we invade and restore democracy?
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Lancer
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Oregon Coast, USA! or Bohol, Philippines!
Apr 1999
time: 05:36
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"The Karen people"
The Karen people?
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Tingkai
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To find the Northwest Passage
Aug 2001
time: 13:36
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I was wondering how long it would take.
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Tingkai
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To find the Northwest Passage
Aug 2001
time: 13:36
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Myanmar/Burma is still economically isolated. The junta is more interested in keeping control and does little to reduce poverty.
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All times are GMT. The time now is 05:36.
Apolyton Time is 00:36. |
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19-06-2005 23:25
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