Madness in Myanmar: Edmonton Sun

Increasingly serious situation could turn into another Iraq or Yugoslavia.

Growing unrest and mass street demonstrations across Myanmar could herald an extremely dangerous period for the nation formerly known as Burma.

Military-ruled Myanmar is extremely difficult to enter and bans foreign journalists. This writer has managed to get into Myanmar three times. On the last, I was told the secret police were actually conducting bed checks in people's homes in the capital to ensure no trouble-makers from the rebellious northern states were in town.

On a second visit, I eluded the secret police and got to see the nation's Nobel prize-winning democratic leader, Aung San Suu Kyi in her home in Yangon, formerly Rangoon, where she has been under house arrest for 17 years.

The crisis in Myanmar seems a simple morality drama. The saintly Suu Kyi is held like a bird in a cage by a junta of brutal, wicked generals, who until recently called themselves the State Law and Order Council, or SLORC. In 1988, the junta's soldiers crushed student demonstrations, killing 3,000. After Suu Kyi's party won a landslide victory in 1990 elections, the generals annulled the vote and declared martial law.

This week President George W. Bush and other western nations called for even tighter sanctions against Myanmar's junta and urged its replacement with democratic government.

Myanmar, in-deed, is a nasty police state. Its generals have plundered resources and kept this magnificent nation in direst poverty. Myanmar is often called a "jewel" and "unspoiled Asia of 1940s." True enough. But that's because the junta and its predecessor, mad dictator, Gen. Ne Win, turned Burma into a weird, hermit kingdom.

But extreme caution is advised in dealing with Myanmar. If things go wrong there, it could turn into an Asian version of Iraq, Yugoslavia or Afghanistan.

50 YEARS

Myanmar has been at war for 50 years with 17 ethnic rebel groups seeking secession from the former 14-state Union of Burma created by Imperial Britain, godfather of many of the world's worst current problems.

Burmans, of Tibetan origin, form 68% of the population of 57 million. But there are other important, well-defined, independence-minded ethnic groups: Shan, the largely Christian Karen, Kachin, Chin, Mon, Wa, Rakhine, Anglo-Burmese, and Chinese.

The largest, Shan, with its Shan State Army, are ethnically close to neighbouring Thailand, and in cahoots with the Thai military. Each major ethnic group has its own army and finances itself through smuggling timber, jewels, arms, and drugs.

The military juntas in Rangoon, and their 500,000-member armed forces, known as Tatmadaw, battled these secessionists for decades until the current junta managed to establish uneasy ceasefires with the major rebel groups.

If the junta were to be replaced by a democratic civilian government led by the gentle Suu Kyi, and military repression ended, it is highly likely Myanmar's ethnic rebellions would quickly re-ignite. The only force holding Myanmar together is the military and secret police.

Shan, Karen, Kachin, and Mon still demand their own independent nations. Myanmar's powerful neighbours -- India, China and Thailand -- have their eye on this potentially resource-rich nation.

China exercises strong influence over Myanmar and is building a naval base near Rangoon to give direct access for the first time to the Andaman Sea and Indian Ocean.

India sees rival China threatening its rebellion-plagued eastern hill states along the Burmese border, and is increasingly alarmed by Chinese naval ambitions in the Indian Ocean.

NEIGHBOURING INTERESTS

A new democratic government in Yangon-Rangoon that is not tough enough to deal with secessionist regions around its troubled periphery could see Burma fall into internal turmoil and also invite intervention by covetous neighbours.

At worst, India and China could even clash head-on over control of strategic Burma, a threat identified in my book on Asian geopolitics and Indian-Chinese rivalry, War at the Top of the World.

So the West should tread with great caution in Myanmar. The West and Asia must exercise great care they do not exchange military dictatorship for ethnic strife and regional conflict. (Eric Margolis/Edmunton Sun)

BURMA: With Technology as Weapon, Citizens Become Reporters: IPS Asia-Pacific

BANGKOK - In sharp contrast to the lack of information during the 1988 military crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Burma, streams of graphic accounts of the biggest uprising in two decades continue to come from within the country, aided by technology and the Internet.

This has also seen something of a reversal of roles in providing information from a country that for many years, has taken great pains to limit easy access to the Internet and mobile telephones.

In the days after Wednesday’s violent crackdown of Burmese monks and protesters and the muzzling of news by state-run media, ordinary citizens have been taking over in providing up-to-date information and journalists, the receivers.

Even though foreign correspondents not allowed in Burma, reports of how security forces shot at crowds, mauled monks and scenes of panic in Rangoon continue to inform international audiences – thanks to blogs, as well as photos and videos taken from mobile telephones and sent to news organisations or uploaded on the Internet.

In the Sep. 27 entry in his blog, 'Ko Htike's Prosaic Collection (http://ko-htike.blogspot.com/), Ko Htike wrote: "To all folk, it is really bad in Yangon. Please, can someone do something for our country.... Inside Yangon it looks like a war zone. I even heard shooting over the phone...They even used teargas in a primary school."

In another blog site, http://dathana.blogspot.com, the blogger who directly participated in the series of Buddhist clergy-led protests asked the United Nations to step in. “We, the people of Burma, need direct actions from the U.N. A possibility could be deploying UN peace-keeping troops and help establish [an] interim government,” it pleaded.

Such reports are also coming in a situation where the local media have been controlled for decades, and where new restrictions were issued recently. On Sep. 23, the Burmese press was ordered by the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division to publish or air announcements stating that they are not supporting the anti-junta protests.

Thus, people are taking matters into their own hands.

"The media are the only defence the people have in this kind of situation and it is clear that there is a synergy going on between traditional media and citizen journalists. This sense of collaboration is apparent in the information and images that are being transmitted to the media worldwide," said Premesh Chandran, founder of the independent Malaysiakini.com news site.

Since the crackdown began, we've been getting information through emails and images every half hour,” Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN) director Khuensai Jaiyen said in an interview, “This is so different from the events in 1988 when information was hard to come by. We didn't have sophisticated tools like the Internet to help us then."

"It's amazing to watch the quality of the materials coming out of Burma,” added Aung Zaw, the editor-in-chief of the Chiang Mai-based ‘Irrawaddy’ magazine (www.irrawaddy.org).

“These images tell the whole story and highlight the nature of the Burmese military junta, their brutality and their intentions," said the former student activist, who had also joined the 1988 uprising.

Foreign journalists are also relying on blogs set up by young Burmese living abroad, such as Ko Htike's blog 'Ko Htike's Prosaic Collection (http://ko-htike.blogspot.com/), as well as soneseayar.blogspot.com, http://niknayman.blogspot.com/, where dramatic images of the situation are uploaded as they come in.

Other Burmese uploaded videos of the monk-led demonstrations on You Tube. A cursory check of the site reveals over a hundred videos related to the ongoing protests, with one video, posted by a CSPANJUNKIEdotORG, getting as many as 21,000 hits.

International news channels such as the BBC and CNN have been flooded with emails and images from within Burma.

Time Magazine ran an exclusive story about a first-hand eyewitness account of the crackdown in its Sep. 26 online issue. "With foreign journalists locked out of the country by Burma's military government, this dispatch was written by TIME staff based on eyewitness reports," it said.

The article described an 80-year-old monk bleeding from a baton gash on his head, people throwing down water bottles from their shop balconies in aid of protesters, burning cars and motorcycles on the road, enraged younger monks carrying clubs and one toting a riot shield snatched from a policeman.

According to the New Delhi-based exiled Burmese news group Mizzima News, these popular blogs and sites have been blocked by the Burmese junta as of Sep. 26.

Internet-savvy users in Burma are reported to have turned to proxy sites and other creative means to be able to get access to the banned sites.

Internet access in Burma, says OpenNet Initiative, accounts for only .56 percent of the population, with two Internet providers under state control.

Support for the anti-government demonstrations is being sought through different ways, including through a signature campaign online, www.avaaz.org, put up by a global advocacy group, Res Publica, and MoveOn.org, an online community of Internet activists in the United States.

As of last count, the campaign has gathered more than 160,000, a big jump from the less than 50,000 a couple of days ago.

The Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma says it is getting much-needed information from their underground journalists in Burma.

"Right now, we are getting information from three online sites set up by citizen journalists. As a rule, we make sure to confirm everything from other sources, including news agencies both within and outside Burma," Jaiyen of SHAN news agency explained.

"The timeliness of the flow of information is getting close to real time. In our case at Malaysiakini, we've been getting new stuff about the unrest every hour. Now whether we can translate this into an actual outcome is a different matter," said Chandran.

The outcome of the protests and whether resistance from inside Burma will survive the military crackdown remains unclear for now.

But "the effect of citizen journalism to the traditional forms of media will definitely have a long-term effect, perhaps giving way to a closer interaction in the future," said Jaiyen. (Lynette Lee Corporal/IPS Asia-Pacific)

Brutal Generals And Dissenting Monks: The Globe And Mail

"If priesthood forms an alliance with the winner of 1990 election, a 'very significant force' would be born".

Penniless, devout and thoroughly dangerous.

Amid reports of mounting violence inside isolated Myanmar, that assessment now seems to be the ruling military's view of the unarmed, maroon-robed Buddhist monks leading the popular revolt against 45 years of dictatorship.

Numbering 400,000 to 500,000 in a country that is 90 per cent Buddhist, with a monastery in virtually every community, the monks in what used to be called Burma command huge respect, providing spiritual guidance and a ubiquitous role at weddings, funerals and other events in the community.

The monks are traditionally aloof and secretive, and the absence of foreign correspondents in the country makes their aims hard to read, said A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi, a professor of international development studies and Asian specialist at Trent University.

In the first weeks of the protests, he noted, the priesthood known as the sangha appeared anxious to keep some distance from pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the 1990 election and has spent most of the intervening years under house arrest.

But recent reports of an alliance with the famous dissident suggest a shift in the landscape.

"This is the most surprising development if it turns out to be the case," Prof. Akram-Lodhi said.

"Together they would be a very significant force ... and the military would have to use a lot of violence."

Sixty years after Burma secured its independence, the generals running one of Asia's most repressive nations have changed its name to Myanmar, built a shiny new, eerily empty capital city 320 kilometres north of Rangoon (now called Yangon) and struggled to persuade their few foreign friends the current upheaval can be contained.

But in many regards, Myanmar's crumbling infrastructure and its 50 million impoverished, ardently religious people remain stuck in a time warp in which Buddhism remains the basis of daily life.

Thus it was hardly surprising that the army held its fire for several weeks, as throngs of demonstrators led by monks choked the streets of Rangoon, Mandalay and other cities, galvanized over a 500-per-cent jump in fuel prices last month.

"An attack on the monks is an attack on people's faith, and that's where there's going to be a lot of problems," Prof. Akram-Lodhi said.

It is thought that about 10,000 monks have been taking a role in the protests. And they know how to yank the military tiger's tail.

Dependent entirely on donations for their livelihood, the monks' recent announcement that they would no longer accept handouts from the junta struck a particular nerve, said Myint Swe of the BBC's Burmese-language radio service.

"The government wants the image they are pious and helping the monks."

Drawn from the Theravada, or southern, school of Buddhism, Myanmar's monks have long been politically active - "the worst of all" the trouble makers, George Orwell wrote in Burmese Days, his 1934 novel about British imperialism's fast-fading glories.

From the British colonial era, through to the 1988 rebellion in which an estimated 3,000 civilians died, non-violence has been the monks' hallmark.

And by every estimate, the support they enjoy is near universal.
"The country is very devout. It's also incredibly poor and unequal, and people find solace in their faith," Prof. Akram-Lodhi said.(Timothy Appleby)