By Jodde Mason
Take an astrologer, hack politicians and a dictator. It sounds like the start of a bad joke.
Actually, it’s the formula Burma’s leadership has been using since 1962 to oppress its citizens. While Burma’s first national election in 20 years might be seen as reason for hope, the actions of the Burmese leadership give little reason to think democracy is on the way. Last week Burma’s junta announced a new flag, national anthem and demanded that the day someone was born on should affect whether or not they can raise or lower the flags. Furthermore, all the old flags must be burned.
If you lived under such a regime, you would probably feel confused, humiliated, outraged and quite possibly threatened. You would feel like you have no voice and that the coming elections in your country were nothing more than a sham. In short, you would feel like a typical Burmese citizen, as this is exactly what happened according to the Oct. 27 editorial in The Washington Post, “Burma’s brutal repression continues with a sham election.”
If you’re a woman, add to that the constant fear of being raped by junta soldiers should you dare step out of line. You would feel like the world doesn’t know what’s going on, as you constantly see journalists arrested, or worse, shot dead for no or spurious reasons. In Burma, simply being a member of the opposition party is grounds for your arrest and detention. You might even be sentenced to house arrest for over 15 years just for winning an election, as in the case of Aung San Suu Kyi.
It is time for this corrupt regime to end, time for prisoners to be freed and time for the yoke to be lifted once and for all from the necks of an oppressed and alienated people. Only the staunchest Hobbesian could in any way call this government legitimate, although, they would still find difficulty defending the Burmese government’s current actions as the lives of many Burmese are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Thomas Hobbes’s rival, John Locke, would have argued that Burma lost its legitimacy in government when their concern shifted to maintaining their power and dominance over Burmese citizens rather than protecting rights to life, liberty and property. Whenever a government takes the lives of citizens armed only with a camera, when it uses violence to silence any voices that might speak out against them, when it controls the labour of the people, it should be deposed of as soon as possible.
So as much as I hate war, I have to ask myself why is it not found in the one place where it might, under some theory of justice, be a just war. If any government deserves to be overthrown it is the government of Myanmar, once Burma, once free. As I’ve already said, I’m against war, but there’s no major effort there. The international community isn’t putting in enough effort to eradicate this flagrant fascism in democratic clothing.
I can’t do justice to the injustice in Burma without talking more specifically about the upcoming elections. The Washington Post piece also states that the junta has set fees so high that for the most part, only junta members can run. There will be few opposition members in the running and most importantly, Aung San Suu Kyi will still be imprisoned.
Amnesty International’s heroic effort to free Burma’s more than 2,200 prisoners is laudable. By starting a photo petition, showing thousands of people with political prisoners’ names on their right hand to the Association for Southeast Asian Nations, they have made a difference. Burma deserves a democratically elected, legitimate government, wherein its citizens can prosper.