Armed troops patrolled Burma's northwest city of Sittwe on Friday [June 15, 2012] as a fragile peace held in the wake of days of sectarian violence that has stoked nationalist fervor and displaced 30,000 people, with many feared dead.
Heavy rain kept many residents indoors in the Rakhine state capital as police and aid groups struggled to get food to thousands of ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Muslim
Rohingyas [next to formerly Buddhist now Islamic Bangladesh] displaced by rioting and arson that have presented a big test to Burma's post-military-dictatorship and new 15-month-old quasi-civilian government.
United Nations officials told Reuters three of their staff, two from the UNHCR refugee agency and one from the World Food Programme (WFP), all Burmese nationals, had been detained by police in the Rohingya-dominated town of Buthidaung for unknown reasons.
More than 20 houses were burned down late on Thursday in a village near Sittwe, residents said, adding to the 2,500 torched in the past week. But there were no reports of further deaths.
MoreWhy is there "ethnic" trouble?Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)  |
| Daw Suu Kyi, the new face of Burma with same dictators |
It is common to stoke up ethnic strife to cover up worse crimes. What could be worse than pitting Buddhists and Muslims against one another?
Dictator Than Shwe's dreams of an oil pipeline around Bangladesh and into India (then secretly China). Who is in the way? Ethnic minorities displaced by the project. Burma is a police state and has been since at least 1948 (which inspired Burmese-British writer George Orwell to title his most important work
1984).
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| Burma's dictator and head of the ruling junta General Than Shwe (Time.com) |
As such its ruling junta has remained in power -- changing the country's name, enslaving millions, relocating the capital, imprisoning its duly elected democratic leader (Daw Aung San Suu Kyi), and killing complainers at will -- even if they are Buddhist monastics engaged in peaceful demonstrations known as the Saffron Revolution. Actress Ellen Page referred to the little known as less recognized Than Shwe as "Hitler." In response to world pressure, Burma has done what America has always done: put on a show of democracy while engaging in the same oligarchical/police state practices it was founded to oppose.
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| Released from custody, Suu Kyi holds little power |
The US remains a colonial power of the military-industrial complex bankrolled by old European banking interests. Burma now hides behind the veneer of an elected president and even a minor minister (Daw Aung Suu Kyi).
Where have all the dictators gone? They are at home at ease in futuristic mansions of a made up city called
Naypyidaw. Corporations 1, People 0.
If ethnic tribes want to stand in the way of Shwe Gas, there is going to be hell to pay. And where is America (aka "the police of the world") in all this? They are first in line to wheel and deal, as recent visits by Hillary Clinton demonstrated. We were not about to sit back and let China and India divide the spoils. Clinton only asked one thing:
Pretend to respect human rights. (We'll show you how).  |
| Than Shwe with UN's Ban Ki Moon (AFP) |
So Daw Suu Kyi was given a nominal seat in government and has gone out into the world portraying the country as "reforming." It is far from reformed or reforming. It is merely becoming entrenched in a more sustainable deception. False appearances are much easier to maintain than shows of brute force, and it is especially nice when a government can do both and simply hide behind its reforms. We're not like the old Burma; we're the new progressive people's choice as shown by paid selections being called "free elections."
SHWE GAS: Corporations and governments are commonly very secretive to the public regarding routes for
construction and there has as yet been no mentioning of an Environmental and Cultural Impact Assessment along any of these routes.
