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Burma once conjured up images of a land of plenty, listening to tales of grand-uncles who set sail from colonial Calcutta to work in colonial Rangoon in the early decades of the last century. Sadly the junta -- which prefers to call the country Myanmar -- made Burma morph into a land of the poorest of the poor, where it plunders the plenty and leaves the population impoverished.
Plenty meant and still means timber, jade, rubies, rice and cheroots, to which recent gas finds have also been added.
But Cyclone Nargis laid bare to the world, after the slaughter of protesting monks in their ochre-colored robes last year, the intensity of misery that hapless Burmese have to endure.
With more than 100,000 Burmese dead and 1.5 million survivors in desperate need of food and water, U.N. aid supplies that could feed at least 95,000 under the World Food Program were impounded by the junta at the airport in Rangoon. Visas for aid workers are being delayed, a precedent never ever experienced before in even the most despotic of regimes when a calamity like this struck.
And going ahead with a referendum to strengthen their position at a time when people are struggling to deal with a disaster of manic magnitude shows what stuff the country’s military leaders are made of.
It is preferable that the world media refer to Myanmar as Burma, in a show of solidarity with the poor and unfortunate Burmese people. Myanmar represents the military junta’s barbarism, while Burma, despite echoes of colonialism, never made the Burmese endure such inhumanity.
The people have been enduring since the military stepped in nearly four decades ago to hijack democracy, much later keeping the brave lady Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for 12 of the last 18 years after democracy threatened to end the military leaders’ stranglehold.
This military junta is not expansionist -- which could have brought retaliatory action from the United States -- but is an incorrigible power-hound. The leaders exercise power over the people and the nation’s resources to enjoy wealthy lifestyles for themselves and their cronies.
The seized U.N. aid must have gone to their families and lackeys. And the reluctance to let in aid workers, especially from the United States, explains the junta’s fragility and fear of intervention -- or maybe, an invasion.
France and Germany have rightly urged the U.N. Security Council to meet and forcibly intervene, which is permissible under such circumstances.
China’s veto reflected the uneasy head that is preparing to wear the Asian tiger’s crown. It is inexplicable how the Chinese -- who can go ballistic if the Beijing Olympics are slighted -- do not see global humanitarian responsibility as a stepping stone toward becoming a responsible superpower. Isn’t the globe interconnected like never before? Or is powerhouse status all about strategic economic interests only, with hunger for energy overriding real hunger faced by a desperate population in one’s own neighborhood?
India’s concerns about militancy in the northeast -- which the junta can facilitate or impede -- as well as huge tenders for gas exploration have made redundant even India’s traditional friend and Mahatma Gandhi-admirer Aung San Suu Kyi. The freezing of arms sales to the junta was a good beginning after it suppressed pro-democracy supporters last year. But it seems India is not bold enough to freeze or walk away from business deals.
Can emerging Asian economic tigers China and India remain morally unscathed after filling the coffers of the junta which sponges off its own people? Perhaps it is too much to expect moral integrity from China, but India is the world’s largest democracy.
While Australia’s Kevin Rudd plans to influence ASEAN to act, his paltry US$3 million dollars in aid, compared to his predecessor John Howard’s US$1 billion plus for the 2004 tsunami, leaves much to be desired.
And why cannot the U.S. and European multinational gas corporations stop feasting on Burmese gas? Whose kitty they are allowing to bulge?
The favorite instrument of sanctions can only aggravate the deprivation of the population. Sanctions and bans should be imposed by Bangkok and Singapore, the favorite playgrounds and health centers for the junta’s upper echelons. Surely they must stash away the loot from in-house banditry in the financial capitals of the world, which with some radical measures could be frozen.
These measures would straightjacket the regime to at least move toward cleaning up its act without directly affecting the already suffering ordinary Burmese. Can’t the world’s rich and famous boycott Burmese jade and rubies? How much of the profit goes to those who mine them?
The regime wallows in power but shivers at the thought of losing it. The world should help loosen its iron grip.
Under pressure, the junta has already allowed in one U.S. aid shipment.
Democracy may not be one-size-fits-all, but in Burma, it is not allowed to fit at all. Boycotting the barbaric bandits would be a step toward, not a colonial, but a democratic Burma of plenty.
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(Susenjit Guha is a freelance writer living in Kolkata, India. He can be contacted at sguha60@yahoo.com. ©Copyright Susenjit Guha.)
