As you’ve read, I am just back from a jazz journalism symposium that featured panelists representing some 16 countries. I’ll be offering reactions in the next issue of Jazz Notes and perhaps elsewhere.
On a sunny day at Columbia University, while we talked about this business of airing ideas and sharing opinions, Burmese monks and civilian protesters were still being rounded up, beaten, terrorized and shot by these gruesome figures. Kenji Nagai, a Japanese video journalist, was gunned down in the street earlier in the week.
I’m certainly no up-to-date source on these events, but keep checking in here. There are hazy, unconfirmed reports of a soldiers’ mutiny (absolutely the only hope for the country, hat tip Sullivan). David Bloom of WW4 Report cites a Jane’s story on Israeli arms sales to the junta over the years. UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari has met with Aung San Suu Kyi, but was rebuffed in his attempt to meet with the regime’s leaders, who continue to display utter contempt for world opinion (and remain shielded from that contempt by their Chinese enablers).
Amitav Ghosh, in 1996, wrote about the “urgent, global dimension” of the Burma democracy movement:
Legitimate, consensual government is the one bulwark between us and the prospect of encroaching warlordism and ever-increasing conflict; in embodying that possibility, Aung San Suu Kyi represents much more than the aspirations of Burma’s people.
As those people undergo imprisonment, very likely grievous torture and perhaps ultimately disappearance, take a moment to reflect on their supreme sacrifice.
The generals may yet silence the Burmese population, but they can never silence the rest of us.
[Update: sign the avaaz.org petition to Chinese president Hu Jintao and the UN Security Council here.]
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