I have been so moved to read of the determined and well-disciplined pro-democracy activities of the Buddhist monks (and nuns) in Burma. The Boston Globe has a good picture, along with the AP daylead on the story, here.
English-Al-Jazeera has pretty good version of the Burmese events, too. It includes a picture of monks walking with calm, nonviolent nonviolent activism.
One little mistake there. The parliamentary election that the National League for Democracy won was on 8-8-1988, not in 1990. The results of that election (= power to govern) were then immediately stolen from them by the military– very similar to what happened to Hamas, 18 years later. And since then, the NLD’s leaders and many of its cadres have been ruthlessly hunted down, imprisoned, and in many cases tortured.
NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991; but that has not prevented the junta from keeping her either in prison or in very tight home-confinement since 1988– with just one short period when she was allowed a small amount of travel around the country before they clamped down once again.
In my 2000 book The Moral Architecture of World Peace: Nobel Laureates Discuss Our Global Future I had a whole chapter about Daw Suu, as she is called. It was very inspiring to learn about her and the development of the NLD’s thinking and organization. I learned a lot from, in particular, these two books: The Voice of Hope (1997), a compilation of discussions she had with writer Alan Clements; and Freedom from Fear (1995), a compilation of her own writings.
In the discussions with Clements, in particular, he seems to be somewhat of a skeptic, asking “But what about choosing violence out of compassion, if it’s the right word… ?” Daw Suu replies, “It depends on the situation and I think that in the context of Burma today, non-violent means are the best way to achieve our goal. But I certainly do not condemn those who fight the ‘just fight’, as it were. My father did, and I admire him greatly for it.”
… Well, I am in the last couple of days of work on my book. I totally need to get back to it. Right now. But I couldn’t resist blogging about this.
What’s happening in Burma these days could change things a lot. In Burma, I certainly hope. But also, far beyond Burma.
10 thoughts on “Nonviolent actions growing in Burma”
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What is the shape of the Burmese political economy? Aung San, Daw Suu’s father, was a communist. He would have had a ready answer to such a question but his daughter’s followers do not. The ones I have met are either puzzled by the question, or evasive, or downright annoyed and curmudgeonly.
What do Buddhist monks have to do with anything? There have been states run by Buddhist monks, but they were not the kind that most of us would nowadays like to inhabit. Why do the monks go and pray outside Daw Suu’s house?
In Steve Bell’s cartoons of him, GW Bush often speaks of “freem n’ moxy”. Are the monks praying to the same “freem n’ moxy” divinity? In other words, is their movement destined towards globalism, World Bank, IMF and WTO? Malls, walled suburbs and freeways, private medicine, education through loans, unemployment, outsourcing, Mac jobs and all the rest of it?
What does Daw Aung San Suu Kyi represent, as opposed to what she has written? I would expect that the pool of individuals who have read anything of hers is tiny compared to the huge number who have heard of her name and seen her photo. What is the nature of this movement? Does it even know itself?
Why do you refer to the country as Burma?
I thought that the name had be changed to Myanmar. That’s what shows on world maps I have seen and in all news coverage until this post.
Aung San Suu Kyi
http://www.dassk.com/index.php
From Free Burma Campaign, South AFrica:
Dear Comrades,
Peaceful protests started taking place in Burma.
Please let be aware about Burma situation and let be ready to assist them.
Let’s Burmese movement get momentum.
Peaceful protest over the sudden unannounced hike of fuel prices by the military
regime took place in Burma this morning on August 19 (Sunday).
The 8888 Generation Students Group made a peaceful march in Rangoon this
morning, started about 10 am and ended around 12:45 pm. About 500 people joined
them. (See photos attached.)
The march began from Koke-kaing and successfully ended when they reached
Kyauk-myong market in Rangoon. Passerby people showed their support as they
clapped and waved hands at the demonstrators and a few police and USDA members
showed up when nearly ended.
Yesterday, the 8888 Generation Student Group issued a statement regarding the
situation of fuel prices. In this statement, the 8888 Group demands that the
military regime tackle the problem of skyrocketing commodity prices and
inflation rate as a consequence of this sudden unannounced hike of fuel prices
and solve the economic and social hardships of the people. They also pointed
out that increasing in particular the price of natural gas, which is abundant
in the country, is not rational.
Htay Kywe, one of the 8888 student leaders, said that this morning march was
also to symbolize and symbolizes the current dreadful situation of ordinary
people in Burma because whole majority people have to take “walk” as their best
affordable means of transportation for daily survival at this hike of fuel
prices while the military elites and their acquaintances possess automobiles
which prices range between 75,000 – 250,000 US Dollar. These prices are quick
shocking while we all are well aware of the dire situation of the people of
Burma as refugees, IDPs, migrant laborers, etc.
There was also another demonstration reported to have taken place about the same
time in North Okkapala Township, an outskirt of Rangoon. And it will not be
surprising if more and more people take actions in coming days or weeks if the
regime does not or cannot resolve this appalling situation. I will keep you
posted with further development on this.
FYI, today Bangkok Post reported that North Korean Diplomats arrived in Rangoon
as agreed in April 2007 to open the Embassy for the first time since kicked out
more than 20 years ago in the aftermath of assassination bomb attack on South
Korea’s President and his ministers during their visit to Burma. A number of
ministers and high level officials died in the attack. Now the Burmese regime
is back in ties with North Korea.
Darf and getting Darfur:
Angelina, Brad seek a Myanmar baby
London – Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt want to expand their ‘rainbow’ family by adopting a child from Myanmar.
The couple have enlisted the help of one of the country’s leading monks to plan a trip to an orphanage there.
According to an insider, Angelina (32) has become ‘increasingly despondent’ about the progress she is making in helping the Third World.
She is said to be desperate to offer help to troubled nations, and feels the repressive Republic of Myanmar is the ideal place to adopt another child – preferably a girl.
The actress already has four children. She adopted eldest son Maddox (6) from Cambodia five years ago, prior to her relationship with Pitt. Two years ago she and Pitt (43) adopted an Ethiopian girl, Zahara.
Earlier this year the couple adopted 3-year-old Pax Thien from Vietnam and last year Angelina gave birth to their daughter Shiloh.
According to sources, Angelina’s frustration at not doing enough to help the Third World is exacerbated by a sense that she and Pitt spend too much time in Hollywood.
(From the Johannesburg Star this morning)
Burma or Myanmar?
Rangoon or Yangon?
It seems that colonial language just won’t go away.
On the rendering of the name, the nationals of the country who are in the pro-democracy movement tend to call it Burma, while it’s the junta that has insisted on Myanmar. But I don’t intend to be dogmatic about this. I believe it is only a question of orthography/transliteration, anyway?
Helena,
On the matter of “officially” sanctioned names for countries and whether we should willingly agree to use them ourselves — or not: I offer the following little vignette.
My younger son who lives in New York recently went to the post office there to mail me a parcel/package here in Taiwan, Republic of China. When the postal clerk — apparently of Chinese heritage — told my son to take off the “R.O.C.” on the mailing label and replace it with the current euphemism “P.O.C” (i.e., “province of China”), my son refused. Since my half-Taiwanese American son doesn’t particularly look “Chinese” (to either Chinese or non-Chinese Americans), the clerk tried to pull the old racial and linguistic “authority” routine on him. “I’m Chinese and I know what to call Taiwan,” she said.
Answered my son (who imbibed his father’s linguistic and political iconoclasm with his breakfast bacon and eggs): “Well, I’m Taiwanese.” The mailing label stayed as written by him and the package arrived safely here in Kaohsiung, Taiwan — R.O.C.
I only mention this crucial point about what we choose to call things, because it goes straight to the heart of what most ails America today: namely, the crushing pressure of “oficially promulgated” and/or socially sanctioned conformity of speech, thought, and behavior — which even has its very own jargon term: “political correctness” — that drives the Nation of Sheep and Fate Driven Herd to their repeated betrayal by those who claim to “lead” them — “politely,” of course. When George Orwell advised us to “never use a word or phrase that you [typically see] in print,” he meant that we should instead choose our verbal nomenclature advisedly, with our own interests and purposes clearly in view, so as to maintain a safe intellectual distance from the credulous crowd. So, those who wish to call a country “Burma” instead of “Myanmar” — or the other way around — have every right to play Humpty Dumpty instead of Alice, according to their wish to become their own mental master or someone else’s linguistic and intellectual trainee. As I used to counsel my own two sons: “You will learn for your own purposes, or someone else will train you for theirs.” Thus my epitaph for the ruined and declining America: “well-trained by and for the purposes of others, indeed.”
Language can accomplish a lot when employed by someone who thinks a little bit before choosing just the right word or phrase. I will always remember with pride the day my younger son came home with his second-semester high school freshman report card: all “A’s” (as in the first semester) except for one “B.” When I gave him the old aggrieved parent treatment, asking how on earth an intelligent and studious boy like him could ever fall so low as to get a “B” in anything so elementary as a high school course. He replied with an obviously well-considered turn of phrase: “That’s because I’m only half Chinese, dad.” Ouch. Point taken. And I never afterward worried about that young man’s ability to think for himself and speak truth to whatever power might confront him in this life.
So I say that we should eschew what Stuart Chase called the “tyranny of Words” (especially the smarmy “polite” ones) and call Burma “Burma” if by that nomenclature we mean the country as it existed before its present military dictatorship seized power — and as we may wish it to exist again.
As well, we who oppose America’s endemic, mindless militarism can openly call General David “progress is at hand (again)” Petraeus what his own commanding officer Admiral William Fallon calls him: namely, “an ass-kissing little chicken-shit” more concerned with toadying to superiors than in completing (as in “finishing”) his assigned task of “surging” American forces out of Iraq and turning that occupied colony over to its rightful inhabitants.
Or, we could call General Petraeus, as I do, a “brown-nose bureaucratic bullshitter” more concerned with cultivating his own public relations image than in saving the lives of Iraqi civilians and American GIs: both of which he has squandered — at the rate of thirteen billion dollars a month — with a profligacy unmatched by any of his equally unsuccessful predecessors. So now — after almost three years since his last Kissingeresque “progress is at hand” political op-ed piece in 2004) he has to bribe Sunni “insurgents” not to kill Americans quite so much with the hundred and fifty thousand automatic weapons he “lost” on a previous tour?
Or, as I said in a Haiku about Deputy Dubya Bush, the “commander in brief” whose lies General Petraeus — Dubya’s Exit Strategy personified — willingly shills like a William Westmoreland, Oliver North, or Colin Powell:
Where did we get him?
How come we can’t do better?
We look so stupid
From The Best and the Brightest to The Worst and the Dullest in less than one generation. “Après nous, le deluge.” Why and how? Because, as the late Barbara Tuchman reminded us about famous incompetent monarchs and their self-dictated legacies: “People tend to accept a successfully dramatized self-estimation.” The generals running Myanmar know this and the American generals pimping out their American troops for needless death and maiming in Iraq know it too. Hence the betrayals of both Iraqis and Americans by the politicians and generals who misgovern America every bit as badly as Myanmar generals misgovern Burma.
Q: What’s a humanitarian intervention?
A: A Darf Invader!
Helena,
I am watching closely and hopefully as well. What do you think other countries should be doing (or refraining from doing) to support the nonviolent movement there? Do you think the current sanctions are helpful?
-Andrew