Burma Killing Fields. Are We Better Than That? Rambo On.
Goal, to reach the end of the world in one piece, more or less. I read about 2012. I am told it is like some kind of pot of gold at the end of some kind of a rainbow. That rainbow is the end of the world.
Whatever it is we have to live in the world while it is still here. So I am going to write about that shit war in Burma. Because that country is suffering and we just ignore it.
Anyway this Rambo movie came on about blood and guts in Burma and I thought what the hell might as well learn something while I watch this blood fest.
This is from a squidoo lens called Burma War
“Civil War and the Forgotten…
I created this lens to Raise Awareness of the situation in and around Burma and to donate any proceeds earned through this site to my friend Lise’s orphanage in Mae Hong Son, Thailand. She looks after 45 children who are orphans from the war in Burma.
58 Years of Civil War and Nothing has Changed
It’s been 58 years and counting since the Civil War in Burma began. Shortly after Burma’s Independence from Britain in 1948, the KNLA and the Karen National Union (KNU) have been in conflict against the Burmese Military Government.
A battle between the Karen people and the Burmese Military has left innocent people brutally tortured, abused, raped and killed.
The people most affected, the Karen, are the largest of the ethnic minority groups living in the mountain ranges of eastern Burma and northwestern Thailand. There are over six million Karen in Burma, and over 400,000 in Thailand.
When I mention the war in Burma to people in America, they look at me dumbfounded and completely unaware of it. Why is it so hidden, so covered up?
Living in northern Thailand, I see how it has affected the locals EVERY DAY. As I sit here from my air conditioned condo looking outside of my window, I see torn up shacks, illegal Burmese kids running around, orphans and people living through such hardships.
My observances of the local Burmese living in Thailand are this: They are the kindest, most down-to-earth and most judged people of anyone in Thailand. The Thai people look down on them and anyone who associates with them. They are impoverished beyond belief. Many of them have escaped the War in Burma, traveled for days with no food, risking their lives to make it into Thailand (safe ground) and turn away from the war. Then when in Thailand they are happy to be alive, but a whole new slew of problems arise because they are not THAI. Many are local farmers who work 12-16 hour days and make 30-50.00 USD per month. Since they are working their children are usually running around on their own, taking care of themselves. It’s dangerous, there are thousands of orphans of the war and people are painfully unaware…until now anyway…”
This is from some Christian Site called Christianity Today. They have some nasty anti Buddhist propaganda which makes me wonder if they would be any better if the shoe was on the other foot.
“Burma’s Almost Forgotten
Christians find themselves battered by the world’s longest civil war and a brutally repressive regime
Benedict Rogers
On the Burmese side of the Moei River, the reality of the Burma Army attack was there for all to see. Where just a few weeks before had stood a thriving community with a church, school, houses, and clinic, there was now little more than ashes.
In an operation that plays out regularly in eastern Burma, the troops had set fire to the homes, looted and destroyed the clinic, burned the crops, and set the church ablaze. This particular village had good intelligence systems; the people knew the military was on its way. Villagers crossed the river into Thailand and remained there until it was safe. Not for the first time, they watched their village burn. Had the people not escaped, they would have been killed, raped, or taken for forced labor. They moved a few miles upriver and built a new community, in the knowledge that it too would someday be destroyed.
“We have to leave village after village, house after house,” the pastor told me. “But it increases our faith. We are Christians; we know God will help us. But please remember us in your prayers. Please do not forget.”
North Americans rarely read about Burma (also called Myanmar) in their newspapers, though the courage of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi garnered a few stories last year. Neither the plight of the 5 million Karen and the few hundred thousand Karenni nor the persecution of Burmese Christians is likely to see much news coverage. That news gap is troublesome because the situation in Burma is one of the most brutal in the world.
‘Buddhist’ Terrorism
The nearly 4 million Christians in Burma are among the 250 million members of the worldwide persecuted church. The U.S. State Department has ranked Burma as one of the six worst violators of religious freedom.
But the persecution is tied up with politics. The Karen, Karenni, Chin, and Kachin ethnic minority groups, struggling for freedom from a brutal Burmese regime, include substantial Christian populations.
In an effort to terrorize the ethnic groups into submission, the Burma Army uses religion as a weapon of war. When it is convenient to do so, the army cloaks itself in Buddhism and stirs up anti-Christian sentiment. Churches are often the first targets in attacks on ethnic villages, while more often than not Buddhist temples are left untouched. In Chin state, which is 90 percent Christian, soldiers tear down crosses and force villagers to build Buddhist pagodas. Burma does not affirm Buddhism as the official state religion, though Buddhists total nearly 83 percent of the population.
But it is not only Christians who suffer. The Burmese regime, known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), oppresses all who oppose it. The regime, which seized power in a coup in 1962, held elections in 1990. It lost those elections overwhelmingly but has tightened its grip on power.
Suu Kyi won the elections but remains under house arrest, and many of the elected politicians are still in prison. Over a million people from the Karen, Karenni, and Shan ethnic minorities are displaced in the jungles of eastern Burma, many without shelter, food, or medicine. At least 150,000 refugees have fled to camps in Thailand, while thousands of Chin, Arakan, and Rohingya are displaced along the India and Bangladesh borders. There are at least 1,200 political prisoners.”
This is a recent article from the New York Times.
“Myanmar Army Routs Ethnic Chinese Rebels in the North By THOMAS FULLER
Published: August 30, 2009
BANGKOK — The Myanmar military has overwhelmed rebels from an ethnic Chinese minority in the northern reaches of the country, the junta’s second victory over armed opponents in three months.
Ng Han Guan/Associated Press
A refugee camp in Nansan, China. Fighting in the northern reaches of Myanmar has caused thousands to flee the country.
Fighting has occurred in the border town of Laiza.
The routing over the weekend of the forces of the small, Chinese-speaking Kokang ethnic group gives Myanmar’s governing generals momentum in their campaign to quell armed opposition before elections and the adoption of a new Constitution next year.
Several well-armed groups, notably the Wa and Kachin, still stand in the way of the junta’s goal of complete control over the country. But a recently announced agreement of solidarity among the rebel groups, which had the potential to slow the central government’s advance against the Kokang, may be fraying.
The Myanmar government’s strategy, analysts say, appears to be to challenge the groups one by one and to try to capitalize on the many factions within each group.
In June, the military defeated ethnic Karen insurgents along the border with Thailand, aided by a local militia of Karen Buddhists who led an attack on forces that were largely made up of Karen Christians.
To defeat the Kokang, the small ethnic group in the north, the junta allied itself with a defector and chased out troops loyal to the Kokang’s chairman, Peng Jiasheng.
A force of 2,000 Wa soldiers had initially come to the assistance of the Kokang, but they retreated Friday, according to Aung Kyaw Zaw, a former rebel based on the Chinese side of the border. This appeared to undercut a mutual-assistance agreement that the rebel groups reached several weeks ago.
Late on Sunday, Myanmar’s official media broke their silence on the fighting with a television broadcast announcing that clashes had ended and providing what appeared to be a preliminary death toll of 26 members of government security forces and 8 Kokang militiamen, The Associated Press reported. “The region has now regained peace,” the official announcement said.
Chinese state media said that two Chinese citizens had also been killed in the fighting.
News services reported from southern China that Kokang forces were continuing to flee across the border into China on Sunday on the heels of what United Nations and Chinese officials estimated were as many as 30,000 civilian refugees. Nearly half the estimated 1,500 members of the Kokang militia have crossed the border and handed their weapons to the Chinese authorities, according to Mr. Aung Kyaw Zaw.
The central government’s assaults on the Kokang, which began last week, have put other ethnic groups on alert, according to Brang Lai, a local official in the Kachin headquarters in Laiza, along the Chinese border.
“People are very concerned,” Mr. Brang Lai said in a telephone interview. On the Chinese side of Laiza, residents have put Chinese flags on their roofs in the hope that they will be able to avoid any additional fighting. Officers from the Myanmar military’s Northern Division were in Laiza over the weekend to call for calm, Mr. Brang Lai said.
Followers of Mr. Peng, the Kokang’s chairman, were spotted by reporters on the Chinese side of the border buying civilian clothes to replace their militia uniforms.
“There was no way we would win,” Ri Chenchuan, a Kokang rebel, said as he shopped for new clothes, The A.P. reported.
The Myanmar government has signed more than a dozen cease-fire agreements with ethnic groups over the past two decades, but the fighting with the Kokang raised questions about the military’s intentions.
Aung Din, executive director of the United States Campaign for Burma, an advocacy group that opposes the junta, said the generals apparently had adopted a more aggressive posture, partly influenced by the Sri Lankan government’s military victory over Tamil rebels in May.
Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, met with Myanmar’s generals in June in what was his first overseas trip after the defeat of the Tamil Tigers. The visit might have inspired Myanmar’s senior general, Than Shwe, who has spent much of his military career battling ethnic groups, Mr. Aung Din said.
“It was an encouragement to the regime to do away with the insurgency once and for all,” Mr. Aung Din said. “Their thinking has changed.”
The motives and strategies of Myanmar’s leaders have long been difficult to divine. General Than Shwe is a very secretive man and the state-run media are highly selective in their reporting. The report on Sunday evening was the first time they had mentioned the campaign against the Kokang.
The fighting appears to have strained Myanmar’s relations with China, especially since the Kokang are ethnically Chinese. The Chinese Foreign Ministry warned Myanmar on Friday to “properly handle domestic problems and maintain stability in the China-Myanmar border region.”
Analysts said that the Chinese government had asked Myanmar’s generals to refrain from initiating military campaigns before the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic on Oct. 1.
In that light, China could view Myanmar’s campaign as provocative, especially since China is a large investor in Myanmar and plays the role of the junta’s protective big brother in the United Nations and other international forums.
Mr. Aung Kyaw Zaw said he suspected that the Myanmar generals wanted to demonstrate their independence to Chinese leaders. Their message, he said, is that “if we want to fight along the border, we can fight.”
“This is a political game,” he added.”
That is about all I have to say. We need to stop supporting regimes that oppress their own people even indirectly. But then when we do the same thing, where do we get off? Nowhere when we torture and blow innocents up from our predator drones. We are no better than the worst in Burma, unless we take a stand against this killing in the name of one ideology or another. On the other hand when Arjuna asked Krisna about all the killing, Krishna replied, I have already killed them, you are just my means. Think about that for a while and see if it doesn’t rock your boat.
Tags: Burma Site of Ongoing Crimes Against Humanity. Rambo In, More Killing Fields.