oh my(anmar)!

Weeks away from my blog, and I return with the simultaneously cheesy and tacky subject line offered above. Plus, the title only works if you mispronounce the country's name. I apologize.

I've been trying to avoid a multi-project-induced nervous breakdown the past few weeks, and while I make no guarantees, the end is nearly in sight and I hopefully will not be taking hostages any time soon.

The whole Myanmar (a.k.a. Burma) protest and crackdown has prompted me to come out from hiding and make a post, be it ever so unwitty. Basically, all I have to say is, "You suck, Gen. Than Shwe." Sorry I'm not much more eloquent at one thirty in the morning. While living in Thailand, I got to spend a little time working with and learning about the Karen, an ethnic hill tribe that straddles the Thai-Burmese border. They have been fighting successive Burmese military regimes for over 50 years, trying to set up the same kind of semi-autonomous region that other ethnic tribes were promised when Burma gained independence from Britain.

As a result of the fighting, tens of thousands of Karen refugees have fled to refugee camps in Thailand. Since they are unable to leave the camps, however, they make good targets for the Burmese military, which sometimes crosses the border in dry season and shells the camps with phosphorous shells, which easily catch the dried-leave roofs on fire, sometimes destroying entire camps. At the school I was at while in the camp, the teachers remove all the books and records during the summer, so as to not lose them in fire should the Burmese burn the camp during dry season. Since Thailand would prefer that the refugees go back to Burma, the Thai military, which runs the camps, sometimes coordinates the attacks with the Burmese military by doing such things as drawing down troop levels before Burmese attacks, or simply leaving key gates unguarded when they know the Burmese are coming.


Students in the camp

The wife and I spent a couple days in Rangoon (a.k.a. Yangon), where a lot of the current situation is/was centered, and one of the most striking things was how "country" the populace is even in the nation's most urbanized city. It was like being with some of the most rural people in Thailand, with most the men still wearing wraps around their waists and many of the women still putting paste on themselves and their kids as a sort of sunblock. Whereas in Thailand or even Cambodia or Laos a lot of the street vendors will be selling trinkets, snacks, etc., in Rangoon the most common thing sold on the street was random metal objects, be they wrenches, screws, or the occasional alms bowl.

The economic policies and general oppression by the military regime has had such a negative impact on even the more-favored ethnic Burmese, not to mention the various disfavored ethnic minorities, that when you go there you can imagine that it hasn't changed much at all since the British moved out in the late 40s. In some ways that can be good, I suppose, but the people should at least be allowed to make that decision on their own. Instead, for instance, when they elected Aung San Suu Kyi as their president the military simply put her under house arrest, where she is even today.


Burmese mother and child

I guess that's my two cents. I try to stay away from rants, since they generally just make people look angry and crazy (hopefully neither of which apply to me), but today I suppose I'll make an exception.