The nightmare in Burma has passed from the headlines but it is not over. Now that they’ve had time to study footage of the recent pro-democracy protests, the government thugs are worsening their terror, rounding up those who took part.
They take anyone they can identify from their videos. People who clapped, who offered water to the monks, who knelt and prayed as they passed. People who happened to turn and watch as they passed by and their faces were caught on film.
And you can be sure they’re using “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
Here are reports of the brutality unleashed against heroic Buddhist monks.
Amitav Ghosh, in his 1996 essay “At Large In Burma,” gives a glimpse into the Burmese totalitarian state:
… every household in Burma must register its members with the local authority; no one may spend the night at another household without obtaining permission from the local ward chairman. Members of ethnic minorities frequently have difficulty registering changes in their “guest lists.” In Rangoon, I met a woman who, after three years of wedlock, still had to queue for weekly permission to stay at her husband’s apartment.
This is what the Burmese people are facing. They cannot hide from authority. The government has made it impossible, and precisely for occasions like this.
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