Burma: How Things Are
Oct 22nd, 2007 | 5 responses
This is a picture of Than Schwe’s latest publicity stunt in Burma, posting in public places, photographs of his innocent victims in chains and often beaten. Each prisoner is forced to hold a sign admitting to their crimes against Than Schwe. They were rounded up for as little as clapping as the monks and nuns marched, for as little as giving food to the holy people. One grim young couple who were arrested, appear to be holding their little child close in their arms. Arresting innocent people and babies. Beating people up. Murder in broad daylight.
Yes, Than Schwe, this is bound to bring you and your family and all who support you, the further dishonor from the world powers that you so deeply seek. Consider it a fait d’accompli. By your own choices, you are disgraced in the eyes of the civilized world.
Over these past weeks, I’ve sent notes by email to all my correspondents and other sources I could find within or near Burma.
In the past 14 days, Silence. Silence now from most all of them.
This is one of my notes sent, and the answer I received today.
Please, do you have any news of the monks and nuns in Burma in the last
week? I write for The Moderate Voice newsblog and have written
several pieces on Burma in the last two weeks. We all fear for the
holy people and those who have supported them. If there is any way
we can help, please let us know. We are in the US. With kindest
regards, this feels like a message in a bottle, Dr. C. Estes
We are sorry but we cannot have any further information.
The brevity of the communiqué, the lack of reference to the question, the word ‘cannot’ is pure code to my ears. This source which was once viable, is now reduced to a sweet politeness that says everything in subtext. My sense tells me this brief wording seems too much like, “Excuse our bloodshed, we are being beaten and killed today.”
Given Than Schwe’s absurdist propaganda released two weeks ago, “reporting” to the world as though we are all mentally defective morons, that he ordered raids of monasteries and there found American flags with Nazi swastikas marked on them, masses of pornography … that Than Schwe thought we would find his diseased 1950s ideas of American outrage to be in any way viable in 2007, is pathetic.
Compared to Than Shwe’s worldwide reputation now as a public assaulter and murderer of innocent holy people, families, elders and the young… by contrast, the Silence coming from the people of Burma seems like a language of its own… ‘the people’s Silence,’ an eloquent language that is true to their hopes and fears, a rarity in a Burma where twenty foot tall lies are daily propped up by little 5 foot-nothing Than Schwe.
There’s a saying in the family of humankind Than Schwe, that the larger the lie, the more easily it topples of its own weight.
Allen Ginsberg, American poet and Buddhist, was also eloquent about dictators like Than Schwe: In a work he called “Wichita Vortex Sutra…”
… war is language,
language abused
for Advertisement,
language used
like magic for power on the planet:
Black Magic language,
formulas for reality —
Communism is a 9 letter word
used by inferior magicians with
the wrong alchemical formula for transforming earth into gold
– funky warlocks operating on guesswork,
handmedown mandrake terminology
that never worked…
…Sorcerer’s Apprentices who lost control
of the simplest broomstick in the world:
Language
© 1966 Copyright, Allen Ginsberg, All Rights Reserved. Wichita Vortex Sutra. New Directions
_____________
CODA
As per the older woman in the foreground of the photo. Don’t ever underestimate old women. They know what’s going on before most anyone else does. The dear child with her, is her reason for ‘reading the air…’ just in case refuge is suddenly needed.
5 Responses to “Burma: How Things Are”
Whats to be done? Applying pressure to China and India appears to be the only recourse since they are the only ones that can apply pressure to Burma. The whole situation is has me feeling like I’m forced to watch a neighbor beat his dog.
Thanks for keeping the topic alive, DR E.
Like Sam. I also feel helpless and as if I were watching a murder in excrudiating slow motion.
Th silence is a scream!
Dr. Estés.
Two Things…or three.
1) I would call you a breath of fresh air but really you remind me of Hurricane Wind…Earthquake Weather…Force of Nature.
People may wonder what can be done in the face of such a seemingly implacable foe as the Burma Junta and their Investors. We can do only what we can handle. We can handle only what we can reach. What we can reach is now, if you’re reading this, as close as our fingertips.
Your article demonstrates the first rule of facing down oppression: ridicule the tyrants’ many aliases. Give them no room to move in the light of day. Give them no rest. Drag them through the streets of public condemnation. Look at all the little piggies, telling piggy lies!
Call Evil by its name. Contrary to myth, you do not give it strength—Buddha said so. Indeed you deny it the refuge of cowards: propaganda.
Evil is, and will act whether called out or not, but surely less so than when allowed to have its own name in silent apathy.
While we may or may not survive what we do not see before us on the path, it is what we choose to ignore that will kill us every time.
We will not allow that. We refuse to assume the position.
Thank you for not bowing down, for not assuming the position of appeasement towards these vicious, murdering tyrants. Call them by their name: Worthless Scourge.
What a gas to experience Real Journalism.
2) I am an editor with The Burma News Ladder. Launched by James Boyce during the initial junta crackdown, around 25 days ago, we have quickly become almost the largest HUMAN aggregated News Site for all articles on Burma. I just posted this article. Please check us out and join in the work. The site is fairly self-explanatory.
3) Here’s a letter I sent to Al Gore and have been sending around in the hopes of generating momentum for all the Noble Laureates to go to Burma Now and together support their imprisoned fellow laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi.
Dear Albert Gore,
Congratulations on being awarded such a high honor!
Can you now, as your first order of business, call President Carter and the other Nobel laureates to gather together in Burma and demand en mass to meet with fellow laureate Aung San Suu Kyi?
You must be prepared to remain in Burma until she is released from 12 years of imprisonment, the monks are released from torture, the people are free to assemble and Democracy is restored.
This is a situation which surely requires direct and timely action from the Nobel Peace Prize community. We must be able to respond faster than this or we will forever be on the defensive against such oppression.
You guys have the world watching and need to strike now.
I know that you must have each others telephone numbers.
Aside from her years under house arrest and in prison, as a fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi is under intense pressure by the brutal junta to meet with them under their conditions, and therefore legitimize their massacre of the people and monks. The junta continues to spin and deny this heinous assault on human rights with rallies and expensive PR.
What is the point of having the Peace Prize if y’all can’t come to the aid of a fellow laureate who is imprisoned for being democratically elected?
If this illegal junta can get away with this then why can’t any other regime imprison any one of you any time, any place, for however long they want, as evidenced with Aung San Suu Kyi?
If you don’t believe me then go and ask them. Demand a meeting with your fellow Nobel Laureate. Now.
Please gather together, all of you Nobel Laureates, and go to Burma and support Aung San Suu Kyi,
demand justice for the people there, before we have to demand justice for all of you over here.
I don’t mean to sound flippant but if you guy’s can’t stand up to this now, then we are all lost…Foxtrot Uniform Bravo Alpha Romeo!
Thank you again for your hard work,
om mani padme hum,
écrasez l’infâme
from the back hand path
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