As an occasional reader of the New Light of Myanmar, I thought it appropriate to review the paper’s output and reflect on the lack of free speech in Burma. This week’s 11th April edition serves our purpose well, as it contains the usual propaganda, lies and odd news items that expose the regime’s view of the world they live in.

Vice-Senior General Maung Aye features prominently in this edition talking to new graduates of the Defence Services Officers Training School. Maung Aye seems to make it clear the assembled cadets that they will take up the reigns of government as they progress through the army. Not surprising that most of the speech is about duties that are the responsibility of a civilian government and only the last sentence about duties in times combat.

What Maung Aye goes on to say regards the SPDC view that a Federal States constitution is so alien to their way of thinking, that it constitutes the gravest crimes of any ‘citizen’ of Burma to propose it – such ‘destructive elements’ will be ‘crushed’. The roadmap will be to the generals liking and not to the people’s. So the persecution will continue until the generals get their way. So much for democracy, dictatorship survives in Burma now and will until the generals are removed.

Other news deals with Maung Aye’s visit to Russia with several members of the SPDC, including the heads of the Navy and Air-force. Burma’s ‘friends’ are countries that have their own agendas on dealing with the country – Russia is keen to gain influence in S.E.Asia, having lost many friends over the years, and is losing ground in the great game of supremacy to arch-rivals China and possibly India – and in terms of arms sales they are now gaining ground. Are these friendships all about arms? Burma is very secretive about its plans for nuclear energy and nuclear weapons – no doubt the renewed relationship with North Korea will give the SPDC other options if they can’t get what they want from Russia.

Maung Aye takes time out from a busy schedule to water the physic nut plants at Bhatoo Station. Maybe the forced labourers had been given the day off, or had collapsed from fatigue. Only in a military dictatorship is the commander in chief of the armed forces so interested in agriculture, albeit with a possible bio-fuel energy product – key issues for an energy minister.

The NLM (Old Darkness!) include an editorial regarding the press conference given at the weekend – now Tai Nation reported this press conference as blatant lies and propaganda, but NLM takes this stuff seriously. Re-reading the article, we notice a great deal of emphasis given to the Vigorous Burmese Student Warriors’ statement a few weeks ago threatening bomb attacks if the SPDC don’t agree to the terms of the NLD Union Day offer. Many of us will have dismissed the letter as a somewhat idle threat from a tiny group, others that the this was a hoax by the SPDC’s Agent Provocateurs – designed to give the desired material to attack the world-wide pro-democracy movement who all agree that the SPDC must be removed from government.

The Vigorous Burmese Student Warriors attained notoriety as a terrorist group in 1999 by storming the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok. After the SPDC and Thai government attacked their camp there have only been a few audio broadcasts from their leader Ye Thiha (Johnny), denouncing those participating in the National Convention and the recent call for compliance with the NLD’s Union Day offer. (see footnote for more information about VBSW). Their only known link to the KNU is that they found sanctuary with the God's Army breakaway faction of the Karen National Union, close to the Thai-Myanmar border. As far as we know, the VBSW is practically defunct as an effective armed organisation.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the NLD, NLD(LA) and every pro-democracy group inside Burma and worldwide have distanced themselves from the actions of the VBSW, reasserting their strategy of peaceful protest for change. The SPDC have carefully ignored this and continue to link the VBSW to anyone who opposes their rule.

If the SPDC truly are afraid that the VBSW is ready and able to destroy the establishment in Rangoon and Nay Pi Daw, then they are woefully over-estimating the strength of, and the support for, the VBSW. I can only speculate that they are becoming increasingly paranoid of anyone who criticizes the SPDC and their government. If the SPDC were a person, we would consider that they are having a mental breakdown and consign them to an institution for the criminally insane.

“Zan Zan” gives us a full page spread on media coverage of the news. She implies that Western democracies are banned from viewing Al Jazeera TV because western governments don’t want such material to be seen by westerners. Well, it may come as a surprise to Zan Zan that it is not difficult to obtain Al Jazeera in the west if you want to watch it. Zan Zan’s main target of course is the Voice of America and the BBC. These ‘media colonialists’ are not giving the world the news that the SPDC want the people of Burma to hear, so they must be given a bad time in the government run press. Well, the BBC also gets criticized from the UK government – when they tell too much of the truth. Zan Zan’s assertion that neutralisation and non-alignment are more important than democracy may come as a surprise to many people in Burma – or perhaps not. This is the sort of nonsense that the regime puts out all of the time. It is also the sort of language used during the cold war of the 1950s – the rest of the world have moved on and into the 21st century since then, but perhaps Than Shwe and his cronies haven’t caught up.

Despite their disreputable attempt at attacking the prestigious BBC, the NLM does cover much news from the UK, including football news and stories of giant rabbits – I thought this was an April fools story, but it is still doing the rounds of the world’s press. Is this more of the diversional ‘soma’ therapy that the SPDC deems appropriate for the people of Burma – to avoid dealing with real hard news?

It has been reported that MRTV now shows popular Korean soap operas at the same time as the BBC and VOA put out their broadcasts to Burma. No surprise again – deflect interest from real news if you don’t want the people to hear the truth. I read recently that during the Vietnam War, the hard-line North Vietnam government was concerned that the ‘soft’ Viet Cong in South Vietnam tuned in to the BBC to hear the truth about the war, rather than tuning in to Radio Moscow or Radio Hanoi – part of the reason so many Viet Cong were sacrificed during the Tet offensive! The implication of course is that the BBC may represent western values, but it recognised by the peoples of the world as providing accurate and true news; when so many governments censor their media organisations to speak only what the government wants to put out. The BBC represents one media source, a western one, but one that can be trusted; more than can be said for the heavily censored media in Burma.

In many western and eastern countries it is possible to receive unbiased newspapers and listen to uncensored news. Those of us who live in relatively free societies (none are completely without some form of censorship, albeit cultural) have the freedom to choose what we read and what we watch and listen to – it is the freedom of speech that most of us take for granted. Sadly many in Burma cannot read or listen to what they want to – not least those who the regime recently beheaded in Karen State as part of what Maung Aye called “to make sacrifices for the nation and the people even without any privileges to gain.” The SPDC are making sacrifices of the people to the Satanic altar of the SPDC; they are taking the lives, livelihoods and lands of the people as their own, as a privilege, as a gain. The people of Burma don’t have the freedom to life; freedom to hear real facts is denied them by the SPDC; the rest of the world is trying to tell them the truth.

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QUOTATIONS

Press freedom is a cornerstone of human rights and a guarantee of other freedoms. It encourages transparency and good governance; it ensures that, over and above the mere rule of law, society enjoys the rule of true justice. There are, however, those who still question the value of freedom of speech to their societies; those who argue that it threatens stability and endangers progress; those who still consider freedom of speech an imposition from abroad and not the indigenous expression of every people's demand for freedom.

This argument is never made by the people, but by governments; never by the powerless but by the powerful; never by the voiceless, but by those whose voices are the only ones allowed to be heard. Let us put this argument, once and for all, to the only test that matters: the choice of every people, to know more or know less, to be heard or be silenced, to stand up or kneel down.

Freedom of speech is a right to be fought for, not a blessing to be wished for. But it is more than that; it is a bridge of understanding and knowledge. It is essential for that exchange of ideas between nations and cultures which is a condition for true understanding and lasting cooperation.

- UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan (1999)

If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

- George Orwell, Preface to Animal Farm (1946)

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

- Amendment I, The US Bill of Rights

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

- Mario Savio, Student Activist (1964)

FOOTNOTE

Vigorous Burmese Student Warriors

The VBSW are a little known group who broke away from the ABSDF in August 1999 as they opposed the ABSDF peaceful protest strategy, with their own strategy of going on the offensive against the SPDC. On October 1, 1999, a group of five members of the VBSW stormed the Myanmar consulate in Thailand armed with AK-47 assault rifles and grenades, seized 38 hostages and made great demands for change in Burma. Following a tense period of negotiation, the VBSW and some hostages were given a helicopter to take them to the Burma-Thai border. After the hostages were released, both the SPDC and the Thai armed forces attacked them, shelling their encampment. A small VBSW group escaped back to Thailand, appropriated a vehicle and went to the hospital in Ratchapuri, apparently to take doctors and medicines back to their wounded colleagues, but became surrounded. Later that night Thai commandos raided the hospital and killed all of the VBSW members. Little has been heard from the group since apart from a couple of news releases such as the one in March this year.

Further information:-
http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/vbsw.htm
http://www.burmatoday.net/dvb/2003/12/031223_student_dvb.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigorous_Burmese_Student_Warriors
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/vbsw.htm
http://www.dictatorwatch.org/phshows/phvbsw.html