[Zafa Noor, USA.]
9 people were killed today (September 27, 2007) in Burma (Myanmar), by the country’s military force. For last few days, freedom-loving people took to the streets, protesting against the oppressive military regime that has ruled Burma for the last two decades. The soldiers under instruction of the Junta used batons, rifle butts and riot shields to beat the protesters, including monks and journalists. When that was not enough to stop the protests, the troops fired automatic weapons on the crowd.
The protest began initially against a fuel price hike (on August 19) that accelerated and became a voice of the people when the monks joined the demonstration and launched a pro-democracy movement. Military forces raided many monastries and beat up many Buddhist monks severely, arrested hundreds of them and at one point fired automatic weapons on the thousands of angry protesters chanting, “Give us freedom.” There are blood stains on the stairs of the sacred institutions and on the streets. The monks are highly revered in Myanmar.
Witnesses and a Western diplomat told the Associated Press (AP) that dozens of men were arrested and severely beaten after soldiers fired into one crowd of protesters. Troops in at least four locations fired into crowds after several thousand protesters ignored an order from security forces to disband.
While the riot broke out on the streets of Myanmar’s major cities, people around the world worried about the safety of Aung Sung Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s symbol of hope — the daughter of Burma’s assassinated independence hero — who has been under house arrest ever since the military rulers took power. In 1988 Suu Kyi co-founded the National League for Democracy that won elections by a landslide in 1990.
[Photo/National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma: September 23. Riot police stand guard between Aung Sung Suu Kyi and monks.]
The military regime never allowed her to lead her people, rather kept her under house arrest for the last 12 years in various capacity. She was offered freedom if she would leave the country, but she refused. Highly influenced by Gandhi, Suu Kyi has always insisted on non-violence as the way to “freedom from fear,” and won the Nobel Peace prize in 1991.
Her most notable quote is
“Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those subject to it.”
Suu Kyi was not even allowed to pick up her Nobel Prize in 1991. UN urged the regime to set her free since her house-arrest was against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) but it was ignored. UN envoys have not been allowed to enter the country since 1994, and her house arrest continued to be extended. The government of Myanmar imprisoned Suu Kyi under the 1975 State Protection Act (Article 10 b), which grants the government the power to imprison persons for up to five years without a trial. Sounds eerily familiar to some of the “special powers” being practiced by the government in Bangladesh, doesn’t it?
The international community has somehow woken up to this crisis, even though the country has been under military dictatorship for the last 45 years. Among those killed Thursday was Kenji Nagai, a journalist for Japanese video news agency APF News. That quickly prompted Japan’s foreign minister state that “..international community cannot allow peaceful protesters to be killed and injured.”
China, after years of refusal to use its regional influence on Myanmar’s still refused to impose sanctions against the country but agreed to condemn the recent crackdown and urge the country’s military rulers to allow in a UN envoy.
European Union diplomats agreed to consider imposing more economic sanctions on Myanmar. US called on Myanmar’s military leaders to open a dialogue with the protesters. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said “