Burma's crackdown on dissidents draws world attention

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Among the bad influences to be dispersed by the noise campaign, says the pamphlet, are: "natural disasters [flooding throughout the country], economic decline, arbitrary detentions, the greedy ruling government oppressing their people, the people in helpless situation, disunity among the people due to the evil spirits, thugs beating good citizens, scarcity of food and needy materials among Buddhist monks, other religious people being oppressed and the evils living at Naypyidaw."

The campaign is thought likely to attract a lot of support because of its anonymous, after-dark nature, but also on account of its astrological context. Sources told The Irrawaddy that the "pots and pans appeal" was being distributed by mobile phone, email and internet Web sites.

An editorial in the Boston Globe has condemned the UN's silence on the situation in Burma. The piece argued that the international body cannot continue to ignore the government-sponsored violence taking place in the troubled Asian nation. Comparing the UN's current inaction to its behavior during the Rwandan genocide, the editorial argued the organization should "feel a moral obligation not to repeat that tragic lapse of solidarity with victims of state-sponsored violence."

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his special envoy for Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, have had two months to reflect on a June warning about Burma sounded by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Not since it denounced the Rwanda genocide of 1994 has the Red Cross issued such a public condemnation of a government's behavior.

The junta has destroyed more villages in areas inhabited by ethnic minorities than have been razed in Darfur. Its partnership in the narcotics trade has helped spread addiction and HIV/AIDS infection to Burma's neighbors. The army's brutal conscription of forced labor has drawn sanctions from the International Labor Organization. Yet when the Red Cross asked to deliver humanitarian assistance to the victims, or even to engage in dialogue with the military rulers about such assistance, the junta rebuffed its requests.

In an opinion piece for Scoop, an independent publication in New Zealand, freelance journalist and peace activist J. Sri Raman writes that though the protests have excited people, they have not "generated blithe optimism about the democratic advance ahead." He speculates as to why the government allowed the protests to take place at all.

In Burma, many theories are doing the rounds about why the junta allowed these protests by unarmed rebels to take place at all. One of the theories, mooted by Burmese daily Irrawaddy, is that the fuel price hike and the freedom for brief protests against it were a prelude to privatization of the oil sector.

A more disturbing theory is that the junta wants to use the protests to divert popular attention away from its delay in holding a long-promised national convention for drafting a new and less-repressive constitution. Some observers also see in all this an attempt by some ambitious members of the junta to embarrass their supremo, General Than Shwe.

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