Better Perspective Needed On Burma

[nyeinchan@xxxxxxxxxxx]

The Nation (Mail Box) July 3rd, 1997.

Better perspective
needed on Burma 

Burma, that most fashionable of human rights issues and those involved 
in highlighting it are in danger of undermining their own credibility 
and sounding absurdly self-important. 

In a Reuter report which your paper ran last Sunday, Douglas Steele of 
the International Labour Rights Fund was quoted as saying, ''Other 
countries have used forced labour, but not since the concentration camp 
system of Nazi Germany has a nation instituted such an extensive 
system." 

While the situation regarding human rights abuses and in particular 
forced labour are cause for serious concern, to somehow imply that there 
has not been anything reaching the scale of the problem in Burma since 
World War II is simply untrue. What about Stalin's reign of terror and 
the rest of the then Soviet Union? What about Mao's ''Great Leap 
Forward" and the excesses of the ''Cultural Revolution" in the '50s and 
'60s? What about Pol Pot's ''Democratic Kampuchea" and the ''Return to 
Year Zero" where the Khmer Rouge turned Cambodia into one vast labour 
camp resulting in the deaths of more than two million people? 

It seems counter productive to use such comparisons as fact. No one is 
defending Rangoon policies. We all know that Slorc is an evil regime, 
but don't over do it. 



A supporter of democracy 

BANGKOK 


"THERE WILL BE NO REAL DEMOCRACY IF WE CAN'T GURANTEE THE RIGHTS OF THE 
MINORITY ETHNIC PEOPLE.  ONLY UNDERSTANDING THEIR SUFFERING AND HELPING 
THEM TO EXERCISE THEIR RIGHTS WILL ASSIST PREVENTING FROM THE 
DISINTEGRATION AND THE SESESSION."  "WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING THEIR 
STRENGTH, WE CAN'T TOPPLE THE SLORC AND BURMA WILL NEVER BE IN PEACE."


_______________________________________________________
Get Private Web-Based Email Free http://www.hotmail.com