News

 

 

Repression in
Burma Garners
Worldwide

Attention

By JJ McCullough, Editor-in-Chief

A harsh crackdown on protesting
monks in the small East Asian nation
of Burma has triggered worldwide
attention and condemnation— including
some voices close to home.

A former British colony, Burma
has been under harsh authoritarian
rule for most of its independence.
After a brief stint with democracy in
the 1950’s, the elected government
was toppled and run for 26 years by
the radical general Ne Win, who,
with Chinese backing, launched an
ill-fated attempt to restructure the
economy along communist lines. Ne
Win stepped down in 1988, allowing
other senior generals to take control.
Led by Than Shwe, the current head
of state, the new junta renamed the
country “Myanmar” and scaled back
many of Win’s socialist reforms, but
retained tight control over the populace.
Democratic elections were attempted in
1990, but then immediately invalidated
when the opposition National League
of Democracy, led by Aung San Suu
Kyi, the charismatic daughter of one of
Burma’s independence leaders, won an
unexpected landslide. Kyi is now under
house arrest, but opposition efforts in
the country continue to flare up from
time to time.

 

The most recent protests began in
late August, as citizens in the country’s
largest city, Rangoon, took to the streets
to complain about rising fuel prices.
As the weeks progressed the protests
escalated into more general themes,
and in mid-September a vital turning
point occurred when thousands of
normally apolitical Buddhist monks
began to join the public calls for
democracy and political reform. The
military is said to have launched a harsh
crackdown on the so-called “Saffron
Revolution,” but exact details—such
as exact totals of those arrested or
killed—remain unclear. Burma is one of
the world’s most isolated and secretive
countries, with media entirely state-run
and virtually no publicly accessible
internet. Most coverage of the crisis
in mainstream media outlets has come
largely from underground sources, as
few western journalists have been able
to infiltrate the country on their own.

In BC, the Vancouver Art Gallery
was a scene of protest last Saturday as
dozens of activists engaged in a two-
hour protest of the Burmese situation,
as part of a “Day of International
Action for a Free Burma.” Over 200
people, including many Burmese-
Canadians, descended on the damp
steps of the gallery to voice anger at
the unfolding crisis. Similar protests

   

were held simultaneously in many other
provinces, as well as the United States,
Europe, Australia, and Asia.

Online efforts have been
considerable as well—last month UBC
student Alex Bookbinder started a

Thousands of monks take to the
streets in Rangoon, Burma.

 

*

Facebook group entitled “Support the
monks protest in Burma” which now
contains over 330,000 members around
the world.