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Speaker: Burma situation direMonday night, the College’s Students for Informed Democracy hosted speaker Thelma Young, campaign coordinator for the United States Campaign for Burma. Burma is in a “dire state,” Young said. There are about 1 million displaced people, 70,000 child soldiers and 3,500 villages that have been destroyed by Burma’s military junta last year. “There are more child soldiers in Burma than in any other country in the world,” Young said. In eastern Burma, ethnic cleansing has forced villagers to leave the country as refugees. “Whatever ethnicity you are, you’re oppressed,” Young said. “The women were forced to work as illegal immigrants in Thailand,” she said. “The fact that they would rather work in a factory than be in Burma was a really big sign to me.” As campaign coordinator, Young currently works with international grassroots movements that support the end of the military dictatorship in Burma. “We do a lot of political advocacy work,” Young said. “Essentially anything to do with congress in Burma.” Due to Chinese support of the Burmese dictatorship, the U.S. Campaign for Burma is currently collecting signatures of people pledging not to watch the 2008 Beijing Olympics. “China is the biggest supplier of weapons to the Burmese army,” she said. The opening day of the Olympics, Aug. 8, is also the 20-year anniversary of the biggest uprising in Burma’s history, which, Young commented, “is like a slap in the face.” Young said the military dictatorship remains in power even though representatives of the National League for Democracy Party, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, won the general election with 82 percent of the vote in 1990. She said most protests to the situation in Burma, including those in the late 1980s and the more recent Saffron uprising in 2007, have been peaceful. “The democracy groups are all about non-violence,” Young said. “I think this can be one of the biggest causes of our generation,” Young said. “It’s a situation that is almost completely black and white.” |
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The situation in Burma is indeed bad, but it is important to get the facts right. The NLD secured just under 60% of the valid vote in the 1990 Elections and almost 81% of the seats. Many Burmese work in Thai factories because US sanctions closed so many private textile factories in Burma itself. The figure of 70,000 child soldiers is a myth which even Human Rights Watch no longer seeks to justify. As for the 3,500 villages destroyed “last year”, the Thai Burma Border Consortium reports that community-based organisations have reported some 3,200 “separate incidents” of villages destroyed, relocated or abandoned since 1996. It is right to give maximum publicity to human rights abuses in Burma, but it is wrong to demonise the situation through errors of fact and gross exaggeration.
— Derek Tonkin Apr 26, 04:40 AM #
OK Derek Tonkin so have you ever been inside Burma Do you know who get work in private textile factories?? those with connections to the military past or present ie. their relatives. many burmese workers who have to go to thailand to work, let alone they will be selected to work in these textile factories, they may not be able to go near them. about the child soldiers, you can look at their pictures and you will see with own eyes whether they are children or not. i would like to invite you to come to burma even for a very short visit to see with your own eyes about the situation before you comment on it.
— padauk Apr 28, 05:29 AM #