Anyone following the situation in Myanmar?

[Neon_Chaos]

The military junta just cut off internet for the entire country, hoping to quell the major exchange of information from inside the country to the outside world... a bit too late for that, I think. Several monks and an international reporter is dead, (video of a Japanese reporter being shot point blank by a Myanmar soldier).

[cartman]

Yeah, this situation has been building for a long time. Evidently the military leaders saw how bad things were getting and moved the capital a couple of hundred miles north into a secure and secluded compound. It is going to get a lot worse over there before it gets better.

[DaddyTorgo]

this is where our troops should be intervening. fucking tragic. and i'm sure it will only get worse before it gets better

[DaddyTorgo]

god. that brings tears to my eyes. makes me wish i was working for an organization that could do something about it

[Neon_Chaos]

Everyone from Bush, China, the Southeast Asian countries... everyone's either pleading for calm, expressing revulsion, or, in the US' case, levying sanctions.

Noone's jumping in to interfere. China is being patient, Myanmar seems to be a stout neighboring country to have, not sure if upheaval is what they want there. I think the US won't go in guns blazing like they did in Iraq, since Myanmar is very close to China... wouldn't want to upset THAT applecart.

[DaddyTorgo]

i heard that the US has frozen the accounts of the 14 junta members too

[King of New York]

Man, that Japanese photographer deserves to be honored in some way for his incredible courage in doing his job right to the end. The soldier who shot him point-blank in the chest and then walked right over him...well, I'm trying to think of a sufficiently awful fate for him.

[Neon_Chaos]

[BishopMVP]

Some background I found interesting

The American government has little to zero influence over Burma, so whatever words that come from our leaders may sound good, but are simply unrealistic. I am also sure that China realizes that this issue will not be on the front burner forever, so the longer the junta can hold out, the higher its chances for survival.
Honestly, I am betting on the junta. They have the weapons and largely the desire to use them. I am not talking about being simply bloodthirsty, but at the end of the day, the internet alone isn't going to stop them if it comes down to it. Sure, they probably don't want to have to go that far, especially now, but it is a huge possibility. As for China's "quiet diplomacy" that we've been hearing about the first few days -- I seriously doubt it. We have heard about this on North Korea for awhile now with no result in terms of regime change or improvements in the human rights situation.
China's main influence comes in terms of its own citizens abroad and living in Burma. These ethnic Chinese, though making up a minority of the population, control the vast majority of the wealth, from small business to mining companies. They are savvy and well educated, much more so in relation to the rest of the population. They are this way in large part not simply because that's how they are, but because of cronyism on the part of the junta. They get their contracts, they junta gets support. Most of what is keeping the junta afloat is this internal symbiotic relationship.
The military autocracy cannot cede power because it would mean the vast confiscations of Chinese wealth, which props this autocracy, and the ethnic Chinese cannot let the jnnta fall because of the obvious ramifications. Not only has this relationship sown the seeds of their own [eventual] demise, but a massive ethnic retaliation. Not only is their money but their lives at stake in keeping power!
I am not saying it is impossible to see a democratic transition, but as author Amy Chua may predict, complete dissolution of the current regime may sow the seeds of genocide. I doubt the junta will allow the situation to reach this point.
The best we can hope for is a development in power-sharing, where the pro-democracy camp is able to get power in policy-making, but with the implicit threat that any move that would drastically target the current elite's wealth specifically for confiscation would result in another military coup. That's what I think the best outcome will be, but I don't think that will happen right now.

[Neon_Chaos]

I guess the topic at hand affects me because I joined in on the People Power Revolution 2 in the Philippines back in 2001. We held a massive rally to depose our President, Joseph Estrada (who was sentenced to life imprisonment last week for plunder), after his impeachment hearings turned out to be a huge farce.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDSA_Dos



Uh... I'm somewhere in that crowd.

[Greyroofoo]

Originally Posted by Neon_Chaos

I guess the topic at hand affects me because I joined in on the People Power Revolution 2 in the Philippines back in 2001. We held a massive rally to depose our President, Joseph Estrada (who was sentenced to life imprisonment last week for plunder), after his impeachment hearings turned out to be a huge farce.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDSA_Dos



Uh... I'm somewhere in that crowd.

I think I see Waldo!!!!!

[Klinglerware]

Originally Posted by BishopMVP

Some background I found interesting

Yeah, that sounds about right. Lack of real interest and lack of influence on the US side, coupled with the two powers in the area (India and China) viewing Burma as a viable trading partner especially if it is "kept stable", equals not much to be done here.

[Neon_Chaos]

Hope wanes among protesters in Myanmar

Sat Sep 29, 5:29 PM ET

Die-hard protesters waved the peacock flag of the crushed pro-democracy movement on a solitary march Saturday through the eerily quiet streets of Myanmar's largest city, where many dissidents said they were resigned to defeat without international intervention.
Housewives and shop owners taunted troops but quickly disappeared into alleyways. According to diplomats briefed by witnesses, residents of three neighborhoods blocked soldiers from entering the monasteries in a crackdown on Buddhist monks, who led the largest in a month of demonstrations. The soldiers left threatening to return with reinforcements.
The top U.N. envoy on Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, arrived in the country but many protesters said they were nonetheless seeing a repeat of the global reaction to a 1988 pro-democracy uprising, when the world stood by as protesters were gunned down in the streets.
"Gambari is coming, but I don't think it will make much of a difference," said one hotel worker, who like other residents asked not to be named, fearing retaliation. "We have to find a solution ourselves."
Soldiers and police were posted on almost all corners in the cities of Yangon and Mandalay. Shopping malls, grocery stores and public parks were closed and few people dared to venture out of their homes.
A young woman who took part in a massive demonstration in Yangon Thursday said she didn't think "we have any more hope to win." She was separated from her boyfriend when police broke up the protest by firing into crowds and has not seen him since.
"The monks are the ones who give us courage," she said. Most of the clerics are now besieged in their monasteries behind locked gates and barbed wire.
Gambari was taken immediately to Naypyitaw, the remote, bunker-like capital where the country's military leaders are based. The White House urged the junta to allow him to have access to Aung San Suu Kyi — the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who is under house arrest — and ordinary Myanmar residents.
The demonstrations began last month as people angry over massive fuel price hikes took to the streets — then mushroomed into the tens of thousands after the monks began marching.
The junta, which has a long history of snuffing out dissent, started cracking down Wednesday, when the first of at least 10 deaths was reported, and then let loose on Thursday, shooting into a crowd of protesters and clubbing them with batons.
The crackdown triggered an unprecedented verbal flaying of Myanmar's generals from almost every corner of the world — even some criticism from No. 1 ally China.
But little else that might stay the junta's heavy hand is seen in the foreseeable future.
The United States, which exercises meager leverage, froze any assets that 14 Myanmar leaders may have in U.S. financial institutions and prohibited American citizens from doing business with them. The leaders, including Than Shwe, are believed to have few if any such connections.
The United Nations has compiled a lengthy record of failure in trying to broker reconciliation between the junta and Suu Kyi. Gambari has been snubbed and sometimes barred from entry by the ruling State Peace and Development Council, as the ruling junta is formally known.
The United States, Japan and others have turned a hopeful eye on China — Myanmar's biggest trading partner — as the most likely outside catalyst for change.
But China, India and Russia do not seem prepared to go beyond words in their dealings with the junta, ruling out sanctions as they jostle for a chance to get at Myanmar's bountiful and largely untapped natural resources, especially its oil and gas.
"Unless and until Beijing, Delhi and Moscow stand in unison in pressuring the SPDC for change, little will change," says Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.
Some Chinese academics and diplomats say the international community may be overestimating what Beijing can do.
"I actually don't think China can influence Burma at all except through diplomacy. China's influence is not at all decisive," said Peking University Southeast Asia expert Liang Yingming.
India has switched from a vocal opponent of the junta to one currying favor with the generals as it struggles to corner energy supplies for its own rapidly expanding economy.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, a 10-member bloc which includes Myanmar, also has given no indication that it is considering an expulsion or any other action.
As governments heap criticism on the junta, Myanmar and foreign activists continue to call for concrete, urgent action.
"The world cannot fail the people of Burma again," said the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, an exile group based in Washington. "Selfless sacrifices deserve more than words and lip-service. They want effective intervention before it is too late."

[BishopMVP]

"The world cannot fail the people of Burma again," said the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, an exile group based in Washington. "Selfless sacrifices deserve more than words and lip-service. They want effective intervention before it is too late."

Sic semper.

[Neon_Chaos]

Another update...

Myanmar sends more troops into streets

1 hour, 37 minutes ago

Myanmar's military government flooded the main city of Yangon with troops, swelling their numbers to about 20,000 by Sunday and ensuring that almost all demonstrators would remain off the streets, a diplomat said.
Meanwhile, a U.N. envoy failed to meet with Myanmar's top two junta leaders in his effort to persuade them to ease a violent crackdown on anti-government protesters. But he was allowed a highly orchestrated session with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Scores of people also were arrested overnight, further weakening the flagging uprising against 45 years of military dictatorship. The protests began Aug. 19 when the government sharply raised fuel prices, then mushroomed into the junta's largest challenge in decades when Myanmar's revered monks took a leading role.
One protest was reported Sunday in the western state of Rakhine, were more than 800 people marched in the town of Taunggok, shouting "Release all political prisoners!" Police, soldiers and junta supporters blocked the road, forcing them to disperse, a local resident said.
Ibrahim Gambari, the U.N.'s special envoy to Myanmar, was sent to the country to try to persuade the notoriously unyielding military junta to halt its crackdown. Soldiers have shot and killed protesters, ransacked Buddhist monasteries, beaten monks and dissidents and arrested an estimated 1,000 people in the last week alone.
But it was not clear what, if anything, Gambari could accomplish. The junta has rebuffed scores of previous U.N. attempts at promoting democracy and Gambari himself spoke in person to Suu Kyi nearly a year ago with nothing to show for it.
Gambari began Sunday by meeting with the acting prime minister, the deputy foreign minister and the ministers of information and culture in Myanmar's new bunker-like capital of Naypyitaw, 240 miles north of Yangon. The meeting, however, did not include junta leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, or his deputy, Gen. Maung Aye, the two key figures whom Gambari had been pushing to speak with before his arrival.
He was then unexpectedly flown back to the main city of Yangon and whisked to the State Guest House. Suu Kyi was briefly freed from house detention and brought over to speak with him for more than an hour, according to U.N. officials.
Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace prize winner who has come to symbolize the struggle for democracy in Myanmar, has spent nearly 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest.
Gambari flew back to remote Naypyitaw late Sunday in hopes of a possible third meeting on Monday, an Asian diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
U.N. officials would not comment on speculation that he was carrying a letter from Suu Kyi to the junta but issued a statement that Gambari still hoped to speak with the junta's top leaders before leaving Myanmar.
The junta did not comment on Sunday's talks.
"I view this is very positive," said an Asian diplomat who requested anonymity, citing protocol. "Hopefully, the shuttle diplomacy will bring some positive solutions to the present crisis as to the process of national reconciliation."
Suu Kyi's own party was not as optimistic. National League for Democracy secretary U Lwin told Radio Free Asia that he expects little progress from the talks because he sees Gambari as little more than a "facilitator" who can bring messages back and forth but has no authority to reach a lasting agreement.
Many see China, Myanmar's biggest trading partner, as the most likely outside catalyst. But China, India and Russia, who have been competing for Myanmar's bountiful oil and gas resources, do not seem prepared to go beyond words in dealing with the junta.
Britain's ambassador Mark Canning said Gambari should stay in Myanmar "long enough to get under way a genuine process of national reconciliation."
"He should be given as much time as that takes. That will require access to senior levels of government as well as a range of political actors," Canning told The Associated Press.
The protests drew international attention after thousands of Buddhist monks joined people in venting anger at decades of brutal military rule. Some 70,000 people took to the streets before the protests were crushed Wednesday and Thursday when government troops opened fire into the crowds and raided monasteries to beat and arrest monks.
The government says 10 people were killed in last week's violence but independent sources say the number is far higher.
Truckloads of armed soldiers on Sunday patrolled downtown Yangon near recent protest sites and along the city's major streets. A nearby public market and a Catholic church were also teeming with soldiers.
The atmosphere in the city was intimidating but not always menacing. One witness said soldiers sat inside trucks and on sidewalks chatting, munched snacks or walked around looking bored.
Still, a video shot Sunday by a dissident group, the Democratic Voice of Burma, showed a monk, covered in bruises, floating face down in a Yangon river. It was not clear how long the body had been there.
People suspected of organizing this week's rallies continue to be arrested, an Asian diplomat said on condition of anonymity, citing protocol. The diplomat estimated the total number of arrests could be as high as 1,000, including several prominent members of the NLD.
Those joined an estimated 1,100 other political detainees already languishing in Myanmar's jails.
On Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI joined world leaders in expressing serious concern about the situation in Myanmar. About 1 percent of the country's 54 million people are Catholics.
"I am following with great trepidation the very serious events," the pontiff said during an appearance at his summer residence near Rome. "I want to express my spiritual closeness to the dear population in this moment of the very painful trial it is going through."
The Catholic Church has ordered its clergy not to take part in demonstrations or political activities in Myanmar. Worshippers at Yangon's Catholic churches Sunday read posted bulletins from its hierarchy stating that priests, brothers and nuns were not to become involved in the demonstrations, but that lay Catholics could act as they saw fit.