Before entering Myanmar from Thailand, you scrub your bags of any hint that you might be engaged in some pernicious evil, such as espionage, journalism or promotion of human rights.
So begins an important New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof, entitled, as is this diary, Sneaking in Where Thugs Rule. Myanmar (which we used to know as Burma) is one of the most closed - and repressive - nations on the face of the earth. Consider:
A blogger, Nay Phone Latt, was sentenced to 20 years in prison. A prominent comedian, Zarganar, was sentenced to 59 years. A former student leader, Min Ko Naing, a survivor of years of torture and solitary confinement, has received terms of 65 years so far and faces additional sentences that may reach a total of 150 years.
Kristof came in as a tourist with his wife (who is Chinese) and two of their children, although
my wife is sick of me getting our kids arrested with me in dictatorship
At a time when a representative of the U. N. has just met with Aung Sang Suu Kyi, it is interesting to see that Kristof argues that the broad sanctions she has urged have not had the desired effect. He writes
As with Cuba and North Korea, isolating a venal regime usually just hurts the innocent and helps the thugs stay in power.
Instead he argues for things far narrower, targeting those close to the regime, and specifically the trade in the arms that help keep the regime in power, noting that
President George W. Bush tried to help Burmese dissidents, but he had zero international capital. The Obama administration, in contrast, has a chance to lead an international initiative to curb Burmese arms imports and bring the regime to the negotiating table.
The list of nations whose arms help the regime maintain its dictatorial reign is broad, those arms coming
from or through China, Russia, Ukraine, Israel and Singapore
with Russia selling it a nuclear reactor.
Kristof tells us of those who risk to try to aid the people of the land, for example, the Free Burma Rangers who
sneak deep into the country for months at a time to provide medical care and document human rights abuses
such as the forced labor conscription of the ethnic Karen people and the raping of women and children - including a 7 year old girl who killed.
Perhaps the best illustration of the situation in the nation can be found in one anecdote related by Kristof, he writes
The most flourishing business we saw on the Burmese side belonged to a snake charmer who set up temporary shop outside a temple. The moment a crowd gathered, an armed soldier ran over in alarm — and then relaxed when he saw that the only threat to public order was a cobra.
Myanmar poses no military threat directly to the United States. Certainly we have our hands filled with other crises, from the possible disastrous collapse of our economy, to preventing an attack by Israel on Iran's developing nuclear facilities (about which you can read more in today's column by Roger Cohen, also worth your time) to a resurgent Russia to an increasingly aggressive China back to a crisis of health care . . . why should we worry about Myanmar?
Here I find myself thinking of the words of John Donne, in his Meditation XVII. I probably need only to say "No man is an island" and some will grasp the reference. We often forget that Donne was writing in a specifically Christian context, as we read
The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume. . .
But many here are not Christians, some arguing that they have no religion or that religion is harmful. I choose not to rehearse that controversy. But I think we can replace the idea of "church" with "humanity" and begin to grasp that the actions of men, as individuals or through governments, do not exist in isolation, but at least potentially affect us all. We could perhaps remember that by blind chance after a previous attempt that day had failed to assassinate the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne in Sarajevo, when he was being driven out the city in an open air car, took a wrong turn, whereupon one of the conspirators happened to come out of a delicatessen as the car was passing by and fired the shots that killed the heir and thereby thrust Europe into the Great War, the poor settlement of which helped lead to the outbreak of World War II only two decades after the end of the previous World War.
Or if you think the military leadership of Myanmar is too isolated for that comparison to work, remember that decisions made in factories in China have killed pets and people in our hemisphere. The world is too interrelated, no country can exist in isolation, and the actions within one nation far too easily spread across the world.
That is the practical, even the pragmatic reason, for concern about what happens in distant climes, a description certainly applicable to the regime in Rangoon and the nation it is crushing. But there is a moral reason as well - to tolerate brutality anywhere is a betrayal of our basic humanity. One reason some of us have argued so vociferously against the torture of the previous administration is that it undercut our ability as a people to speak out on behalf of those who are subject to such brutality in other nations. As I cannot accept waterboarding and the other methods of so-called "enhanced interrogation" being done in my name (I am, after all, part of We the People of the United States and thus also a small part of the sovereignty), I cannot acquiesce by silence when it occurs in other nations done by regimes for which I do not bear political responsibility.
The portion of the Donne meditation that is best known ends like this:
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
Perhaps it is a similar reason that impels Kristof to attempt to bring to our attention the suffering of people in Africa as well as Myanmar. I know it is why when I read things like today's column I find myself moved to try to make others aware, as I am doing by this diary, which may scroll into oblivion, but which perhaps will motivate a few to read, then to ponder, and then perhaps to act, even if that action goes no further than forwarding a link to a few friends. It is by such small first steps that great movement begin, and humanity can be affected for the better.
So I ask this of you - please read the Kristof and consider passing it on to others. See if you agree with Donne, that you can claim for yourself his words that any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.
Thank you for reading this.
Peace.