Friday, September 28, 2007

The Courageous Monks




Myanmar and the world
The outside world shares responsibility for the unfolding tragedy in Myanmar
LIKE North Korea's Workers' Party, another vile dictatorship that has visited misery and penury on its own people, Myanmar's junta has survived in part through diplomatic triangulation. Like North Korea, it has borne isolation and rhetorical hostility from the West by cosying up to the neighbours, notably China. And it has tried to avoid total subservience to any one of these by playing them off against each other....

Western and Indian analysts worry that China sees Myanmar as part of its so-called “string of pearls” policy of building naval and intelligence bases around the Indian Ocean. There were reports that China was delivering signals equipment for monitoring stations on various coastal sites, and had a permanent presence on Great Coco Island (see map). Such talk has fuelled Indian paranoia, though Western analysts dismiss it.

Border trade, through the thriving, sleazy town of Ruili, also boomed. In the 1990s it included opium and heroin; shared needles produced China's first HIV epidemic, helping teach China the importance of “stability” in its neighbour.

In recent years the economic relationship has been transformed by China's hunger for energy and its involvement in big infrastructure projects. According to EarthRights International, an American NGO, Chinese firms are by now involved in about 40 hydropower projects and at least 17 onshore and offshore oil-and-gas projects. They have also announced plans to build a 2,400km (1,500 mile) oil-and-gas pipeline from Arakan in western Myanmar to China's Yunnan province."


See also The Irrawaddy

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good post, pic and video. Bush slammed the UN and the rulers of Myanmar in his UN speech earlier this week.

The UN must do something, but they never use military force to fight.
That is a huge problem.

Illegal drug fortunes are at the heart of this.

absurd thought -
God of the Universe wants
complete narco states

criminals in power
loving the corrupt drug war


absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
shoot peaceful protesters

calling for democracy
which you must never allow
.