Posted on 03/30/2003 6:09:18 PM PST by Enemy Of The State
'After Baghdad, Yangon'
By Nelson Rand
MAE SOT, Thailand - If George W Bush is wondering where next to take his "regime change" crusade after he's polished off Saddam Hussein, Saw Bawah has a suggestion: Myanmar.
Saw Bawah is a medic with the Karen National Liberation Army. Recently he came across the border from his jungle base camp in Myanmar to this small Thai town to watch the US-led "shock and awe" campaign against Iraq on a television in the office of the Arakan Liberation Party (ALP), an armed ethnic group opposed to the ruling junta in Yangon.
Saw Bawah's Karen group has been fighting for an independent homeland in eastern Myanmar since 1949. On this day he sat with his face right up to the TV screen, watching in awe as coalition planes dropped bombs on Baghdad and firefights erupted in Umm Qasr. It was an information overload for this man who rarely receives any news from the outside world - let alone live TV coverage of a war. He couldn't tell the difference between Saddam Hussein, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf and Americans on the television set, but he knew what was going on: Britain and the US were taking action against a brutal dictator and his regime.
Said Saw Bawah: "I hope that when the US is finished with Iraq, it'll do the same in Burma."
He was not alone in his sentiments. It is here in Mae Sot where political dissidents, exiles, and ethnic leaders and guerrillas from neighboring Myanmar congregate to battle their own repressive government - politically and militarily - that has been ruling their country with an iron fist since 1962.
Like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Myanmar is ruled by a repressive government that has been blasted repeatedly by the international community for human-rights abuses including rape, torture, the imprisonment of political prisoners, and the killings of ethnic minorities. The International Labor Organization has slammed the country for its use of forced labor, Reporters Sans Frontieres calls it the "world's largest prison for journalists", and a report last May by the Shan Human Rights Foundation documenting the systematic use of rape by the Myanmese army on ethnic-Shan civilians received widespread publicity and condemnation of the Yangon government by the international community.
Myanmese dissidents and ethnic insurgents based in and around Mae Sot know what life is like living under such a regime, and so they watch with envy as US and British troops invade Iraq to destroy Saddam's government.
"We would have liked the Americans to do what they are doing now in Iraq to have done in Burma 50 years ago," said Aung Naing Soe of the ALP. He was among 15 Myanmese from his and Saw Bawah's ethnic factions who sat glued to the television set, flipping the channels between CNN and the British Broadcasting Corp.
There were no debates or arguments in the ALP office about the war. Nobody criticized the US and Britain for their actions, disputed the morality of the invasion, or condemned military action for causing the loss of innocent lives. Everyone agreed: war was the right course of action. Everyone there wanted the US to do the same to Myanmar, and they all were willing to lose an innocent family member in a military strike if it meant freedom for Myanmar. "We are not fighting for our individual families," said Naing Soe, "we are fighting for the freedom of our country." (The ruling junta officially changed the name of the country from Burma to Myanmar in 1989.)
"The people of Burma know only too well about Iraqi suffering, as they have suffered themselves under the hands of a brutal military regime possibly worse than that of Iraq," said a Myanmar activist in the ALP office who spoke on condition of anonymity. "But for Burma there is no end in sight as they don't have the natural resources that interest other countries like oil. Where does this lead them in their struggle for democracy? ... Another 50 years of murder, rape, torture, summary executions and genocide - unthinkable."
Ethnic groups in Myanmar such as the Karen, Shan, and Arakanese accuse the Myanmese government of genocide in their ethnic areas. In the words of one senior KNLA commander, Saw Ner Dah Mya, "The Burmese government wants the Karen to survive only in museums."
The country is besieged with international sanctions for its poor human-rights record and is widely condemned for not honoring the results of 1990 national elections in which opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi won a landslide victory. The country is also the world's second-largest producer of opium.
Saw Thashee, an aide to senior KNLA leaders, said the KNLA would be willing to give 10,000 Karen troops to help the US in Iraq if they would help them afterward to free Myanmar - a very generous if not impossible offer considering the KNLA only has about 5,000 soldiers.
There was only one person in the ALP office who took a different stance on the war with Iraq. "I'm against it," said Ran Naing of the ALP. "Because the US didn't ask me to come and help them."
And you may remember the signs that the Ivorians held up after the French sold them out: "President Bush, please help us."
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