[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index ][Thread Index ]

select1 :AB99-9 (r)



All: Please be natofied that the analitica piece that is sent to me by
Cahao-Tzan Yawnghwe will be posted as a separate item each week in
newsforum.com. It will ba avaialable for all of you, in case you miss it, by
hitting a link on the home page.
I realize that all of you get the piece but newsforum.com is now receiving a
thousand vistors a week, so that it will be available to a much wider
audience here.

With great admiration and respect,

I am, gratefull yours,

(s)Joseph B. Coggins, Publisher

Chao-Tzang Yawnghwe wrote:

> *****
> RELAYED BY CTY -- INTERCHANGE.CA
>
> copy:
> No.99-9                                          Analytica Birmanie
> THE KOSOVO PROBLEM AND PARALLELS TO THE POLITICS OF REPRESSION IN BURMA
>
> There are many parallels between the Kosovo problem in Yugoslavia and
> the politics of repression in Burma. In both countries, a group of men in

> power have embarked on a wildly irresponsible policy of repression
> against ordinary people. This includes genocidal and ethnic-cleansing
> actions against people of a different culture, language, and identity.
> Both countries were at one time organized around the principles of unity
> in diversity and ethnic equality, which worked after a fashion in Burma
> till the military usurpation of power in 1962.
>
> The difference between the two situations is that Yugoslavia lies in
> Europe, while Burma is in Southeast Asia. As such, the international
> community has paid more attention to the former -- intervening when the
> "old" Yugoslav communist order fell apart after the death of Tito and the
> disintegration of the Marxist bloc in Europe.
>
> Even then, it took years of suffering on the part of the Bosnian Muslim
> population for the internation community, and the NATO powers in
> particular, to stop the bloodshed and ethnic cleansing that had been
> perpetrated by the Milosevic regime, at present engaged in cleansing
> Kosovo of ethnic Albanians.
>
> Analytically, it can be said on balance that the international community,
> UN especially, has been inattentive to the suffering of ordinary folks in
> the Balkan. This is also true for Burma.
>
> In the case of Burma, the UN has passed resolutions after toothless
> resolutions calling on the brutal military regime to accommodate the
> aspirations of the people for democracy, human rights, and ethnic
> equality and justice. Human rights violations in Burma -- rapes,
> extrajudicial killings, forced labor, plunder and pillage especially of
> rural people in the ethnic areas -- have also been endlessly document by
> UN agencies and officials, but with nothing done to assuage the plight of
> the victims. For example, the 100,000 or more Shans forced to flee to
> Thailand are not even acknowledged as victims of ethnic cleansing actions
> by Rangoon junta. They are branded as illegal immigrants and forced to
> fend for themselves as best as they can in what is to them a strange
> land.
>
> Being attentive to the plight of victims -- the ordinary folks -- in
> Burma, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo or elsewhere, does not necessarily imply
> that the international community, more specifically the UN, NATO, the
> United States, and others, will be called to intervene everywhere -- as
> NATO and the U.S. is now doing in Kosovo.
>
> Attention to the plight of ordinary people in problem countries and areas
> of the world, would compell the international community -- governments
> and international bodies -- to be guided in their approach to these
> situations by a set of firm principles, rather than by political
> expediency. Questions such as the following are fundamental to such
> principled approach: are powerholders within a problem country
> legitimate, are they serving the people, do they observe their own laws
> and constitutions, or are they behaving like criminals -- murdering,
> raping, looting, plundering, and are they engaged in genocidal and ethnic
> cleansing actions against groups with different culture, identity,
> language, and religion?

>
> These are the questions that should be focused on, well before dropping
> bombs and launching air strikes. In the present Kosovo crisis, the plight
> of victims of domestic oppression and repression has not been adequately
> focused on, and scant effort made to help them prior to the air strikes.
> An unfortunate result of this is that charges of genocide and ethnic
> cleansing levelled against the Milosevic regime appear to many as nothing
> more than hollow and cynical justifications for the dropping of NATO and
> American bombs and missles on Yugoslavia.
>
> The fact that international intervention in Kosovo is spearheaded by a
> military organization -- NATO -- rather than the UN or the European
> Union, points out clearly to the lack of moral sense and moral courage on
> the part of the international community, and worse, a clear lack of
> principles.
>
> A different way forward must be found to ensure peace and stability
> around the world. It must be based on firm and principled stand against
> lawless despots and brutal powerholders who wage war against their own
> people and deny them their rights as human beings. The international
> community must come to grips with the fact that a very, very large
> portion of human suffering and misery, impoverishment, danger to life,
> limb and property of ordinary folks are rooted in despotic and/or
> illegal, illegitimate rule and rulers.
>
> Despots who rule at gunpoint, or give sanction to rapes, murder, plunder,
> and genocidal actions should be given notice that they stand outside the
> pale of civilization, and treated accordingly. These regimes should not
> be given the privileges, courtesies, and other facilities accorded to
> bonafide governments.
>
> It should be made very clear by the international community that regimes
> that kill their own people, plunder the natural resources of the country,
> impoverish and bring misery and suffering to ordinary folks are not
> governments, not in the legal sense of the word. Then, and only then,
> will the rule of law and respect for human life and dignity established
> that will make redundant military actions -- air strikes -- that in the
> long run hurt ordinary people more than it does despots like Milosevic,
> and others like him who rule in Burma and elsewhere.
>
> ANALYTICA BIRMANIE
> April 7, 1999.
> ---------------------