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Friday, August 11, 2006

NS on Burma

Well done to the New Statesman, in amongst its usual diet of predictable anti-Blair/US/Israel me-tooism, for drawing attention to the human rights disaster that is the Burmese "State Peace and Development Council" (surely the most misnamed organisation in the world?) military regime. They've done a special issue on the subject - most of which is online - http://www.newstatesman.com/nsspecialissue.htm

and includes the following stats:

"Burma by numbers:
  • 500,000 number of soldiers out of a population of 50 million
  • 19 the annual sum, in pence, spent per person on health
  • 30,900 hectares of opium poppies cultivated in 2003
  • 15 years in jail: penalty for unlicensed possession of a fax machine or modem
  • 540,000 estimated number of internally displaced people
  • 17 percentage of schools with safe drinking water"

The UK Burma Campaign is based in Hackney at Charles Square in Hoxton: http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/ and deserves support.

Co-located with them is the Free Tibet Campaign, http://www.freetibet.org/ - maybe the NS should run something on the situation there as well.

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6 comments:

  1. Dave Cole10:57 am, August 11, 2006

    How do you effect that change? Invasion? Sanctions? Hope?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous11:39 am, August 11, 2006

    I don't understand the Free Tibet campaign.

    Tibet was liberated from a reactionary theocratic regime in 1959 by the People's Liberation Army.

    Surely you don't want to go back to a state run by monks?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Luke Akehurst11:52 am, August 11, 2006

    Depends if you think the genocide of 1.2m Tibetans "liberated" them. The Dalai Lama is calling for Tibet to be a democracy, rather than "run by monks". If pushed to choose I would pick monks over Maoists.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous1:36 pm, August 12, 2006

    "If pushed to choose I would pick monks over Maoists."

    Obviously Luke was never educated by monks like the so-called Christian Brothers. (So-called because they are neither Christian nor brotherly).

    At least the Maoist state has been susceptible to change, development and progress. The theocratic regime was unlikely to.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Luke Akehurst3:47 pm, August 12, 2006

    The "change, development and progress" in China being that they now combine a Communist dictatorship with no democracy or freedom of expression with a rampant free market, environmental despoilation and increasing inequality. How progressive! They can't even claim, a la Castro, to be providing decent free education or healthcare.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous3:19 pm, August 17, 2006

    http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20167538-1702,00.html

    ReplyDelete