Ali Ba Ba and Four Hundred Thousand Thieves

_ by Prof. Kanbawza Win
Abhorrence and horrified, the international community look on at the unfolding of modern Arabian Knights in changing the Burmese natural disaster into a human catastrophe. Not that the words of Edmund Burke, an 18th century Anglo Irish philosopher words, “All that necessary for the evil to triumph is for good men and women to fold their arms and do nothing about it,” proves to be true, but irresoluteness of the world particularly that of the West which championed democracy and human rights did nothing, except their megaphone diplomacy of loud rhetoric not followed by any action conceded to this crime against humanity. The classic example is the withdrawing of the Western flotilla, which the Generals are so paranoid as this is the only language they understands, prove that action is much needed in that sad country where crime against humanity has triumph.
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A month after Burma’s cyclone left 133,000 people dead or missing, the UN’s food agency warned that “urgent work” is needed to help hundreds of thousands of survivors stave off hunger. Delayed and obstructed by the ruling junta, despite their commitments to do so, international assistance has yet to reach about a quarter of a million people. A trickle of assistance that got through was seized and sold on the street while the Junta declares the relief phase is over and forcibly evicting peoples and an estimated 2.5 million people have been displaced by this crisis. No nation on earth can match Burma’s record of atrocities. The ruling Junta has carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing involving the systematic use of rape as a weapon of war, the forcible conscription of child soldiers, human minesweepers, torture, murder, and the destruction of over 3,200 villages. More than a million people have been internally displaced by military offensives aimed almost exclusively at civilians. Hundreds of thousands have fled to camps in Thailand or into India and Bangladesh.
Now confirmed news reveal that several colonels gathered at night get into a truck and went to the area of the cyclone victims where they picked up the critically injured victims lying that they are taking them to hospitals and put into their truck then drove away to the place which they had dug a big hole and threw them all together and buried them alive. This news is nothing new to the Burmese because since the 7th July 1962, when I was just a freshman, in Rangoon University I saw with my eyes of how the Burmese army blown up the Student’s Union, while many students were inside. Again when I became the Prime Minister’s Secretary in 1976 I saw with my own eyes, the order to cremate the bodies killed in the demonstrations including those who are badly injured but still alive. A soldier who defected to the ethno democratic forces reveals that he could not carry out the order to burn the wounded demonstrator alive when he is shouting that he is still alive. There is an ample of authenticated proofs that these soldiers will do anything to sustain them in power why is the world looking on?
The Generals are using the goodwill of the world as an opportunity to carry on with their diabolical business as usual. There is no reconstruction in any sense but only the continuity of benefiting themselves and their cronies (Tay Za, Steven Law and Zaw Zaw are giving to reconstruct some infrastructure) by tricking, manipulating and killing any one who reveal the true situation. Has the regime able to lie all the people all the time? Cyclone Nargis could not kill a million but the Junta can? They will continue to kill in their living silence as even before the cyclone people are silently dying of so many diseases (HIV/AIDS Pneumonia Malaria, Malnutrition) now the army had accelerated it by withholding the aid and sending back the survivors seeking solace in towns to their original place.
“Crime against humanity” which is an act of persecution or any large scale atrocities against a body of people is the highest level of criminal offence, which Burma refuse to ratify in June this year. Besides, blocking aid for cyclone victims was not only breaking international law, but also flouting its own criminal code under criminal laws 269 and 270.
Burma’s feudal warlords are not deaf and dumb the real cause is that the generals truly fear is that if they allow US warships and foreign forces to come to the aid of cyclone survivors in the Irrawaddy delta, people will soon rise up and the regime would be overthrown. This is the only rational which every Burmese can read but not the international community. Hence Aung Zaw wrote, “Imagine a scenario where US marines and other servicemen land in the Irrawaddy delta, to be greeted by desperate Burmese urging them to overthrow the hated regime the relief mission could quickly turn into one of regime-change.” The other factor is the fear of exposure, foreign aid workers and media will exposure the real extent of disaster and its criminal neglect not only to the world but also to the entire people of Burma.
While the White House has made a significant investment in Burma, domestic political pressure on the Oil autocrat is minimal because Burma represents little strategic value to the United States is well known. U.N. apologists would decry a U.S.-led intervention as a breach of international law–but only by ignoring the “responsibility to protect”R2P doctrine adopted by U.N. member states nearly three years ago. “If the deliberate and calculated failure to protect and assist its own population in the face of a devastating catastrophe does not invoke the U.N. mandate, what does?“ Wrote Benedict Rogers and Joseph Loconte.
Not that the Junta can easily hohoodwink the UN Secretary General, who was taken on a cyclone tourism of a show camp, opposite of reality, after manipulating its special representative Ibrahim Gambari, the Burmese men in uniform ask for $11.7 billion aid without any simple arithmetic tantamount to the strategy of Ali Ba Ba and the forty thieves. Given the unflinching paralysis of the U.N. Security Council over Burma, what should the United States do? International community has the moral sensibility even though the political will to confront the most despotic of regime is missing. The question is will the American leadership prevails in such a situation? The United States, with a democratic coalition that could include Great Britain and France, should prepare immediately to intervene in Burma to ensure humanitarian aid reaches the tens of thousands of cyclone victims whose lives are still at risk. Surely an intervention of this kind, even with its humanitarian objective, would not be without its risks but the costs of inaction–the deaths of thousands of people, the emboldening of a murderous regime, must also be weighed.
Intervention will be seen as divine intervention by the Burmese people, not only to help the cyclone victims but also to finally free the entire nation from the military yoke, “Please do not compare Burma with Iraq, because Buddhist monks, students, Burmese patriots will happily assist you with whatever you need to go inside Burma and help the cyclone victims and entire nation Many concerned Burmese citizens are willing to join the intervention. Please do not waste precious time.” wrote the ethno democratic forces of Burma to US President. Burma represents an opportunity not only to save lives, but to rescue the principle of humanitarian intervention from the forces of cynicism and moral cowardice.
Now it is a shame that USS Essex and French warship Mistral with its tons of relief supplies will be leaving for good, tantamount to pouring oil to the fire of Crime against Humanity. We cannot comprehend of why did the Western powers bow down to the regime’s insistence that only civilian craft and aid workers will be used when the regime has been lying all the time? Perhaps the Burmese saying of “Mwe Mwe Chin Che Myin Dae” literally interpreted as a snake sees the legs of another snake. Both the General and the Burmese people knew full well that millions of Burmese wait in hope for the arrival of US warships, and not only for the relief supplies they would bring. It could prove to be one of the most important legacies of Bush administration and if it miserably failed perhaps Obama or Mc Cane would do so.
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