Burma

I have blogged before here and here about the problems in that benighted country. The article is in The Independent, please don't buy the newspaper, I never do, but do read the artcle here. Finally a British newspaper has devoted a whole three pages to the issue and here are some extracts -

"The people of Burma endure human rights abuses on an unimaginable scale. Rape, torture and forced labour are facts of their lives. So why does the world refuse to act?"

"Burma suffers a political, human rights and humanitarian situation as grim as any in the world today. The country is run by an utterly illegitimate government that spends 50 per cent of its budget on the military and less than a $1 (50p) per head on the health and education of its own citizens."

"The thugs and impostors who rule the roost practise some of the most egregious human rights abuses known to mankind. Rape as a weapon of war, extra-judicial killings, water torture, mass displacement, compulsory relocation, forced labour, incarceration of political prisoners, religious and ethnic persecution, and the daily destruction of rural villages are all part of the story of savagery that has disfigured Burma.

People lack access to food, water, sanitation and the most basic health and education provision. Twice over the past three years, I have met just a handful of the 500,000 internally displaced people in eastern Burma and the 100,000 living in refugee camps in Thailand, victims of the wanton savagery of the Burmese Army.

Harrowing accounts of children dying from malnutrition, women perishing in childbirth and people succumbing to HIV, malaria and tuberculosis will remain indelibly imprinted upon my mind if I live to be 100. Most shocking of all was the experience of meeting children who told me they had seen their parents shot dead and parents who were forced to watch their children's summary execution."


The regime in Burma disgusts me and should disgust you.

The Independent posits the question "Burma: A plight we can ignore no longer", well some of us haven't been ignoring the issue and if The Independent hadn't have been so obsessed by attacking the Iraq invasion and the "atrocities" perpetrated by Israel.