Burma

RIP.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7016608.stm

Is the US doing anything to help? Is there anything ordinary citizens in the US can do to help? I'm working and don't have the time this evening to do a bunch of online research. Thought I'd ask the board.

 

RIP, Peaceful Myanmarese Demonstrations.

And there's probably nothing we can do. And since Burma has nothing we want, there's nothing the government can do, either.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7013943.stm

 

I'm not sure there's much to be done. This military junta has been completely unresponsive to foreign outrage since 1988. I got an email this morning from PEN International which included the following:

PEN has long been concerned about freedom of expression in Myanmar. Since the 1988 crackdown on the National League for Democracy (NLD) in which thousands were killed and thousands more arrested, the numbers of detained writers known to PEN has remained largely unchanged. The State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), that seized power in a military coup on 18 September 1988, have remained apparently impervious to the considerable and sustained international pressure for its gross human rights violations).

PEN is currently campaigning for the release of nine writers serving sentences ranging from seven to twenty-one years imprisonment in Myanmar. All are detained for their peaceful opposition activities. They include Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the NLD and writer, who has spent the large part of the past eighteen years in detention.

 

Democrats say

we must get out

And poor Myanmar?

They only pout.

Burma-Shave.

 

Beyond Rangoon is pretty solid film about Burma's fucked up situation.

 

Nice.

 

In an homage to Tiananmen Square, they're shutting down communications, too.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/28/burmese-government-clamps-down-on-internet/index.html?hp

 

A Japanese news photographer was killed over there yesterday:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-myanmar28sep28,1,2519432.story?coll=la-headlines-world

What a wreck that place is.

 

There's a thread over on the j-board about him. I posted some video of the shooting from the Guardian, too. Terrible.

 

He was probably on a balcony in Amman.

 

"You most likely know it as Myanmar, but it'll always be Burma to me."