www.newsandletters.org
|
|
NEWS & LETTERS, June 2002
OUR LIFE AND TIMES: New opening in Burma?The release of Aung San Suu Kyi marks a new development in the fight for freedom in Burma. First confined in 1989 in the wake of the millions-strong pro-democracy uprising of the previous year, she has spent most of that period under house arrest. Aung San Suu Kyi has refused to compromise with the military dictatorship. She has pointed to the fact that her National League for Democracy won 82% of the vote in a free election, later annulled by the military. She has continued to call for economic and political sanctions against the regime. At least 1,500 other political prisoners still languish in the government's jails, while the Burmese people live in poverty and oppression. Only a third attend primary school. AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis are rampant. Freedom movements of national minorities, who constitute a third of the population, have been crushed, with forced labor imposed on prisoners. The most persistent force of opposition, the youth, have seen their universities closed again and again. While the military has deliberately left the limits of the current opening unclear, the Burmese people are sure to test it. Since the military takeover in 1962, which imposed the infamous "Burmese road to socialism," a bizarre amalgam of narrow nationalism, Stalinism, and Buddhism, the revolt has been ceaseless. After the mass mobilization and repression of 1988, the worldwide human rights movement began to take up the cause of the Burmese people, pressuring many of the leading powers to enact sanctions. |
|
Home l News & Letters Newspaper l Back issues l News and Letters Committees l Dialogues l Raya Dunayevskaya l Contact us l Search Published by News and Letters Committees |
