Asia: Burma / Myanmar: R+ts advocate jeopardized by 'idiot Yank' swimming into her house-arrest residence

Emma Harley writing in Telegraph UK, "Ang Suu Kyi's biggest fan gets her arrested" (May14,2k9)

So some idiot Yank has swum across the lake surrounding the home of Aung San Suu Kyi, the democratically elected leader of Burma, and given the junta that has usurped her office the ammunition it needs to renew her detention if it chooses.

The American was uninvited. No one asked him to splash his way over and then drip on her carpet until men with guns came to take the object of his political desire away - the lady herself apparently asked him to leave. Acquaintances of Vietnam veteran John Yettaw, who at 53 is described as "a psychology student", say he is "a nutty fellow". No kidding. Let's hope he's not also given to self-recrimination because he has done something terminally, criminally stupid.

It is tempting to see this manic foreign intervention as a metaphor for the ill-focused good intentions lavished on Mrs Suu Kyi by the West. But for the regime to jail her for the actions of this selfish lunatic would be akin to jailing someone for being stalked. Or deselecting an MP for receiving the inevitable letters written in green and purple ink with the extra important addendums written sideways in the margin (such letters are always written on lined paper for some reason). It would be like killing a goat for being too seductive after it had been buggered by a goatherd. To jail her for this would demonstrate, if further proof were needed, that the regime in Burma is unreceptive to any kind of logic as the rest of the world understands it. It makes you wonder why they need a pretext at all?

Read the irreplaceable Garma Chang on Buddhist Logic (in trans 1969? Pennsylvania State University Press).

This is a regime that murdered thousands of students in 1988 when Burma had its own Tiananmen Square moment, which is consistently described by those in a position to know as one of the worst five regimes in the world, and which is currently jailing its own citizens for periods of 34 years and more for doing what the government itself failed to do and helping each other after 140,000 people died as a result of Hurricane Nargis - then having the timerity to speak about it to each other.

Think of the lack of paths to uppper mobility in Burma today. The military is like an established Buddhist order, with lifetime formation once you join up and rise in rank a little or a lot over time as you prove your ability and loyalty. A general has first of all his ranks and then the Sanga of Buddhists priests to secure first of all. Democracy? Instability, they think.

The French oil company Total is in Burma, as is US-owned Chevron. So the sanctions are patchy, to say the least. Brad Adam, director of Human Rights Watch's Asia operation, says that the only pressure that would make any conceivable difference to the Burmese junta would come from India, Thailand and most of all China.

"China is holding out against action on the UN Security Council. If anyone wants to help counteract the damage that has been done to Aung San Suu Kyi's democracy movement, they could usefully write to the Chinese embassy and tell them how angry they feel that China could fail to speak out to Burma, disregarding this brave woman's actions. There is a feeling that Burma is getting very close to the end of what China is prepared to put up with on this issue."

So, the point seems to be that People's Republic of China may have grown weary of Burma's rightwing generals and Buddhist h+ priests, with China preparing to pull the plug on them. I doubt it.

-- Politicarp