Seriously, Can We Please Do Something In Myanmar?
May 27th, 2006 | by steve |So how long will they detain this woman? Suu Kyi has spent 10 of the last 17 years in house arrest because she offers an opposing “Pro-Democracy” ideology to lead the country. It’s disheartening to read about this lady. Seems to me that she is a living martyr.
One Response to “Seriously, Can We Please Do Something In Myanmar?”
By The Cranky Brit on May 28, 2006 | Reply
Yes, she probably is.
And, to its credit, the US has had sanctions in place against Myanmar for quite some time. So has the EU, although our sanctions aren’t tough enough and are unlikely to get tougher anytime soon as long as certain countries have economic interests there.
Beyond that, what are our options? Talking isn’t exactly accomplishing much. China won’t put sanctions on them as the timber trade is important to their economy and anyway, it’s not like China really cares about locking up pro-Democracy campaigners, is it? And military action, well, even allowing for the possibility given our forces current positions, it’s a very different environment to Iraq. Dense jungle, lots of cover, forget Iraq, this could be another Vietnam. The Burmese campaign of WWII was one of the most brutal and bloody for the Army. No reason to think it won’t be again.
So, yes, I would love to do something about this, but I can’t see what that ’something’ would be.