Burma Needs Tangible UN Intervention Now

by Nathan Maung
October 15, 2007
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=9017
The idea of pushing the Burma issue to the top of the United Nations Security Council's agenda is to allow a peaceful political transition and to assure that the international community will help Burma to emerge from a military dictatorship.
However, Burma's state-sponsored terrorism against it own people continues, and innocent people are dying on the streets and in the detention centers. Those who are arrested and kept at the interrogation centers are facing unthinkable tortures and living in horrible conditions without food and proper medical treatment.
Crises from prisons, detention centers and homes in Burma are considered as the internal affairs of Burma by its neighbors, particularly China and India. China and India, Asia's powerhouses, still believe the Burma military government has the ability to create a stable political environment and has serious intentions to establish a dialogue with the opposition to promote democracy in Burma. Time will tell if that assessment is right or wrong.
Last Friday, the junta rejected the UN Security Council's statement, which called for a genuine dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi and concerned political parties in Burma.
The junta continued to arrest the people who participated in the peaceful demonstrations asking for national reconciliation and it continued to ignore the calls for the release of all political prisoners. Raids were carried out by the government's special police forces and pro-government thugs on the homes of democracy activists at night. At times, when they couldn't find the activities, they detain family members with the intention that the activists would surrender voluntarily later.
The junta said it regrets the Security Council's decision to "strongly deplore" the junta's brutal crackdown on the peaceful protests over the past weeks all across Burma. Though as many as 100,000 people took to the street to ask for political reconciliation, the junta denies the protests reflect the people's desire for change.
Of course, the world should remember the junta's propaganda that the "people desire" to "crush all internal and external elements as a common enemy" who interferes with the internal affairs of the state.
Clearly, Burma's paramount leader Snr-Gen. Than Shwe has refused to engage the opposition in talks and has signaled the crack down on dissidents will continue in order to prevent future demonstrations in Burma.
Under the name of the "Three-Sons Cleaning" project, the Burmese junta has escalated the arrests of the students, monks and activists, and soldiers who refused to shoot.
According to some reports, in one week at least 50 people were beaten to death and thousands of detainees were sent to labor camps.
There is no doubt that the failed state is heading toward a dangerous, massive purging of opponents and large-scale killings.
The Burmese people are asking for outside help because they fear mass extermination of the opposition on the scale of the Sudan, Rwanda, Congo and Cambodia. Like Rwanda's Intrahamwe militia that led the ethnic cleaning with machetes, the government backed thugs of Swan-Arr-Shin are killing monks and students now in detention centers. They attacked Burma's pro-democracy leader and her convoy in 2003 in upper Burma where at least 300 democracy activists were beaten to death.
The junta's supremo, Than Shwe, offer to meet with Suu Kyi and appoint a liaison minister simply a tactic to buy time.
The United States, Britain, and France will undoubtedly be back at the table of the Security Council for an arms embargo against Burma's repressive regime. And it will be another chance for China and Russia to use their power to block the decision.
Remarkably, the Chinese UN deputy ambassador wished the Burmese people "good luck" after Beijing joined other security council members in the first unanimous statement on Burma. The Burmese people, however, will never experience "good luck" until China abandons its support of the junta's state-sponsored terrorism.
Now, it is a time got China to change its policy toward Burma. International intervention to stop human rights violations against civilians is an essential task for civilized nations. Burma needs tangible, effective actions from the United Nations.
The Burma situation is a time bomb.
The call for help is also a plea for moral responsibility. The Burmese people can survive without food, but not without dignity.

Nathan Maung is a former editor and writer in Thailand and is currently a media studies major in the United States at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro