Burma Matters

Burma Now

The present situation in Eastern Burma’s mountain jungles is dire.

Most of the world is unaware of what is really going on there and the larger significance of it. Many have gravitated to images of democratic leaders and activists brutalized and imprisoned by the military dictatorship – a tragedy. The greater tragedy, however, lies in the shadows of Eastern Burma where the Burmese Army of over 400,000 (including over 70,000 child soldiers) concentrates to wipe out minority ethnic hill tribes sitting on lands rich in natural resources.

The dictatorship’s decades’-long campaign of terror, rape, and murder of Burma’s ethnic peoples gets relatively little attention around the world. Some of these ethnic groups were America’s and Great Britain’s most faithful allies in World War II. They and their families paid with their lives by the thousands for this allegiance. That solidarity with democratic ideals still lives on among old and young alike.

Their search for freedom and democracy continues on since 1945. Some of the old World War II veterans themselves still fight on 64 years after that war’s end.

Reality?

Ethnic minorities that comprise almost 50% of Burma’s population have been forgotten and left to their silent fate. While international corporations reap huge profits in Burma, the uneasy truth is that they are had on the backs of massive, ethnic forced labor under the dictatorship’s control – all done invisibly “in the shadows”.

3300 villages burned and mined to date and over 450,000 refugees on any given day as testament to this – a Globalization nightmare on going every day for people with but one hope.

They hope people far from them will care.