Japanese View of Burma's Economy, f (r)

[zni@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: Re: Japanese View of Burma's Economy, f


>"Does Suu Kyi not realize that ASEAN's constructive engagement and China's
>impressive economic inroads echo a
>common chord within the Myanmar people?" -- Osamu Yasuda
>
>Citizens of Burma, does this man speak for you?  If not, please let him
>know.  He can be reached at the following address:
>
>     Mr. Osamu Yasuda
>     Director
>     Nomura Research Institute
>     134, Godo-cho
>     Hodogawa-ku, Yokohama
>     Kanagawa-ken 240 JAPAN

Thank you, Carol.

Mr. Yasuda has apparently joined the rank and file of world-class
boot-licking professionals' club.  Dr. Robert H. Taylor of the School of
Oriental and African Studies at London is another certified club member and
much more eloquent in writing apologia on behalf, first of the Burma
Socialist Program Party and, currently of Slorc for the dictatorship in
Burma.

I wouldn't be suprised if  Osamu Yasuda, Director, Nomura Research
Institute is on the payroll of some major Japanese corporations that have
been  pushing the Japanese government to pave the way for another round of
economic plunder of my country.   Many of our elders who lived under the
brief but most brutal fascist rule by Japan some 50 years ago, like other
Southeast Asians from Korea and the Phillipines still recall vividly utter
devastation of the country by both the occupying troops and their business
counterparts, major Japanese corporations including Mitsui, Mitsubishi and
so on.

What is noteworthy is that these staunch advocates of the so-called
constructive engagement seem to be the ones who are poised to gain much for
themselves from kowtowing the illigetimate SLORC, which even the world's
most influential pro-business paper calls "thugs":  military rulers as in
the case of  the Thai leadership, autocrats like Lee Kwon Yu, corporate
executives like Christopher Sinclair of Pepsi, tour managers as in the case
of Britain's Paul Strachan who is the head of the resurrected colonial
company "the Irrawaddy Flotilla Co.," professional researchers like Osamu
Yasuda and some Burmese activist-cum-opportunists who advocate "Trading
with the Enemy."

Their analyses and arguments delivered as a voice of rationality and
disguised in the professional and academic language are driven nothing
other than unrestrained greed, petty self-interest of all sorts and
cut-throat worldviews.

If  Osamu Yasudasan is serious about doing research (one would assume from
his title he does some research on Burma, despite his apparent ignorance of
politics, culture, and economy of my country) on contemporary Burma and Daw
Aung San Suu Kyi's economic and political vision, he should begin his first
lesson with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's Oxford Lecture "Towards a True Refuge",
which can be found in "Freedom from Fear" (1995 Revised Edition).

Before he makes himself look stupid again, Director Osamu Yasuda would do
well to read the following edited volumn which provides thoughtful and
informed analysis on many past and several current sanctions and episodes:

David Cortright and  George A. Lopezz (ed), Economic Sanctions: Panacea or
Peacebuilding in a Post-Cold War World (Oxford: Westview, 1995).

Sincerely,

zarni

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