World’s Shame – Blind Eye to Burma
March 28, 2010 Leave a Comment
A good friend of mine focuses on helping the oppressed Karen people of Burma. Yesterday he sent me an update and one particular excerpt called out to me:
Orphans eating at a Burmese orphanage
How can anyone, or any government, look at these smiling children and then look the other way? How can they ignore the situation when the dictator’s soldiers enter their villages, raping the women & young girls, and then burning the huts and food supplies to the ground?
The smiles of innocent children
No words suffice! also sums up the results, or lack thereof, from years of rhetoric from the United States with respect to the situation in Burma. In January, Kurt M. Cambell, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, testified before the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stating:
Let me turn to another area of renewed engagement: Burma. Mr. Chairman, your leadership on this issue has been instrumental in changing our policy and initiating steps to engage the Burmese junta. As you are well aware, the Administration’s formal review of U.S. policy towards Burma reaffirmed our fundamental goals: a democratic Burma at peace with its neighbors and that respects the rights of its people. A policy of pragmatic engagement with the Burmese authorities holds the best hope for advancing our goals. Under this approach, U.S. sanctions will remain in place until Burmese authorities demonstrate that they are prepared to make meaningful progress on U.S. core concerns. (emphasis added)
REF: Principles of U.S. Engagement in the Asia-Pacific
Those words are meaningless when the rape and murder continue. I doubt the ravaged girls, orphaned children and dying babies draw comfort from sanctions remaining in place. If the world continues turning a blind eye, meaningful progress will no longer be necessary – the Karen people of Eastern Burma will have been exterminated!
Refugees from the war zone cluster in small hide sites throughout Karen State in Eastern Burma. After their villages and rice crops have been burned, these villagers have not option but to flee deeper into the jungle.
This is an example of the Karen villages often invaded by Myanmar’s soldiers.
Refugee camps in Thailand are home to over 150,000 refugees from Burma. Some refugees have been in these camps for over 20 years. Some young adults have never known any life other than this.
This tragedy will only continue as long as the rest of the world chooses not to care.
In the long term, please contact your elected officials and ensure their awareness of the human rights violations occurring within Burma, urge them to call for action by the United Nations to end the oppression.
Along with that, please learn how you can help by supporting the efforts to care and feed the Karen refugees where you can support them directly, including via PayPal.
For more information:
Worldwide Impact Now (WIN)
WIN is an expanding international network of Western activists and ethnic minorities collaborating in common cause. This includes professionals in the fields of law, business, education, the performing arts and visual arts. It also includes grassroots ethnic minority leaders and youth activists in both America and Burma, as well as in-region Western ex-patriots in professional fields. A “community of purpose”.
MISSION: To engage, enable, empower and emancipate man, woman, youth and child through individual and communal development in the spirit of selfless service to mankind.
WIN also provides updates on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, and their Burma Now blog.
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