Burma’s grim reality

[Jonathan Fairfield]

OPINION

Burma’s grim reality

JOURNALISTS IN Burma are “stifled” by a “climate of fear,” Amnesty International reported recently, finding “repression dressed up as progress.”

The military government, after several years of pretend negotiations, recently vetoed constitutional changes that would have limited its power. Peace talks with ethnic groups have collapsed.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration, in its annual human rights report released just over a week ago, cheers a “trend of progress since 2011.”

Wai Wai Nu, a Burmese activist who recently visited Washington, is not surprised by the discrepancy. “The international perception is quite different from the reality,” she told us. “The human rights situation is deteriorating.”

Conditions in Burma, a Southeast Asian nation of about 56 million people also known as Myanmar, did improve in 2012. Wai Wai Nu herself, imprisoned in 2005 at age 18 because her father was a pro-democracy politician, was released along with hundreds of other political prisoners.

Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the democracy leader who had spent the better part of two decades under house arrest, also was freed and allowed to contest and win a by-election for parliament. The U.S. government, eager to pocket a foreign-policy success, eased its sanctions on the generals and former generals running the country.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/burmas-grim-reality/2015/07/05/0d9bc852-2026-11e5-84d5-eb37ee8eaa61_story.html

[ezzra]

Why some article on ThaiVisa refer to them as Burma and some articles as Myanmar?

is it to please both side of the divide or is it an oversight by whom ever airing those

articles?

[kerrysum]

Kind of stupid to me, if memory serves me correct, Burma was an experiment of the British in socialism, wasn't it? Most people that I have met from Burma. spoke with that special accent.... Wow could it have been British?

[Srikcir]

Uninspiring journalism.

JOURNALISTS IN Thailand Burma are “stifled” by a “climate of fear,” Amnesty International reported recently, finding “repression dressed up as progress.”

[Daniel Boon]

the question is ... is Myanmar behind the times or ahead of them ... given the incremental tightening of rights by 'democratic governments' around the world, and Homeland Security (head honcho is ex Stazi) and Jade Helm in the USA ?