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NEWS & LETTERS, June - July 2008
Burma cyclone and worse
The cyclone that struck Burma in May was only the beginning of death and devastation, which the military junta intensified. The outlaw rulers of Burma stunned international opinion by refusing aid shipments or putting killer conditions on accepting aid. Military control of the country was used not to funnel food and water to cyclone victims, especially to the hard-hit minority Karen areas, but instead to divert the best food and supplies into the coffers of the military.
This was not merely the result of indifference or incompetence. Just a week after the cyclone, troops attacked, burned and looted the Karen village of Mu Li Khi, the latest attack that even involved systematic use of rape and enslavement to fracture its opposition. The military junta had proved its willingness to massacre even ethnically Burmese students, farmers, workers and monks, in bloodbaths from 1988 to as recently as 2007. Despite the cyclone, the military extended the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi, who still has not been able to take office since she won the last election--in 1990--and bloodied activists rallied in front of her house on her birthday. Even with the cyclone, the military took no holiday from their campaign targeting the Karen minority.
Karen areas contain the timber and mineral exports to China and the West that have enriched the generals. The comparison here is to the attitude of Indonesian rulers to the 2004 tsunami's destruction of insurgent areas of Acheh, and to the ill-concealed satisfaction at the fate of Blacks uprooted by Hurricane Katrina displayed by government officials from sheriff's deputies to Bush.
--Bob McGuire
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