Never Again? What About Burma?

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Bangkok ---

Never again. Those are the empty words that have long wafted in the rarified air of high-level, important-sounding diplomatic gatherings; words made to sound sincere by gifted speechwriters, crafted meticulously and couched in just the right sentences so that the listener will feel that lump in his throat and have to choke back tears.

Never again. The words came often on Monday, when the United Nations gathered to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, where as many as 1.5 million, mostly Jews, died in gas chambers or from starvation at the hands of the Nazis in World War II.



Never again, they started saying almost 60 years ago. But somehow it took 60 years to say it officially in the U.N. General Assembly. I read Monday's polished speeches in Thailand, as I tried to find out what the tsunami wrought in nearby Burma, one of those lands where "never again" means nothing at all. The speechwriters know their craft. They managed to mention many of the places where "never again" has long meant nothing.

But they did not mention Burma because the killing there is slower, slower than the deliberate slaughter today in Darfur, the orgies of killings in Rwanda in the '90s, or the madness that engulfed Cambodia in the '70s.

Burma is being slowly strangled by its own government. A once prosperous nation is gasping for air. A few years ago, I visited Burma --- renamed Myanmar by its brutal dictators --- and discovered a land where people live in fear; where the government does little more than strengthen its rule, enrich itself and terrify the population. It's a land where a heroic woman, Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, has spent most of the last nine years under arrest, as have many of those chosen by their own people 15 years ago,when the government miscalculated and allowed elections. I also found a land whose suffering is all but forgotten by the rest of the world.

That's why when the tsunami swept across this region, killing more than 5,000 people on Thailand's Andaman Sea coast, a coast that continues on Burma's side of the border, I worried about those living on Burma's stretch of coast.

The Burmese government announced that just a few dozen people died there.But, as one Burmese exile in Thailand told me, "If that's true, it's the first time the Burmese government has spoken the truth."So, I'm trying to find out the truth.

I reached a European businessman while he was in Burma. On his cellphone he told me the rumors swirling in the streets, that more than 10,000 people died there during the tsunami. I asked if I could speak with one of his friends. They all refused. He told me they said the danger was not worth it, because "nobody cares what happens in Burma."

I will continue trying to find out what the tsunami really did there, and what the government has done to help the victims.

As I dig through the sparse information coming out of Burma, however, I
have found a muted sense of excitement. It turns out something happened in Washington that stirred up political activists in Thailand and Rangoon.

Activists are elated by what they heard from Secretary of State-designee Condoleezza Rice during her confirmation hearings. Rice actually mentioned Burma as one of the six countries in her "outposts of tyranny."The Burmese have had bitter experiences in their efforts to end decades of tyranny, so they know better than to allow themselves any real optimism.

They don't expect much change in the international approach to their plight --- an approach that has allowed their tragedy to continue seemingly without end.

Still, in a world that keeps promising never to forget, it is nice to at least be remembered. But that's still a long way from the true meaning of "never again."

Sudan's Bloody Peace

SUDAN
Bloody peace ignores tragedy in Darfur
Miami Herald
Posted on Fri, Jan. 14, 2005
BY FRIDA GHITIS

The streets of Juba, in southern Sudan, filled with joyous celebrations last Sunday. The thousands who came out to march and chant their happiness could hardly believe that the moment had finally arrived.
After decades of fighting, one of Africa's longest running and bloodiest conflicts had officially come to an end. Across the border in Kenya, officials from around the world had gathered to witness the signing of a peace deal ending a war that killed at least two million people and left millions more homeless. The president of Kenya called it, ``the beginning of a new, brighter future for the people of Sudan.''
Really? We may want to set aside that Nobel peace prize just for now.
In fact, rather than praise and commendation, the names of government leaders in Khartoum belong on indictments in war-crimes tribunals. Instead of shaking hands and back slaps with the world's politicians, these leaders' limbs belong in shackles. If ever there was a country deserving of regime change, Sudan is the one. And, as is often the case, powerful people around the globe have shielded and protected these leaders, allowing their track record of serial genocide to continue to this day.
The war that we can only hope just ended in the country's south pitted the Muslim central government against the Christian and animist south. Because most of the victims were Christians and the territories are rich in oil, the world eventually took the conflict seriously and exerted the necessary pressure to bring a resolution.
While the celebrations over the peace deal in southern Sudan unfolded, however, the systematic slaughter in Darfur, in western Sudan, continued. There, the war sets Muslim against Muslim. But the government and its supporters are Arab Muslims, and their victims are ethnic Africans, not Arabs. Despite many lofty-sounding speeches, threats and ultimatums, the world appears unwilling -- definitely not unable -- to do anything meaningful to stop the killing.
Let's be clear about this: Responsibility for the outrages in Darfur, where at least 70,000 have died and some two million have been forced from their homes, lies squarely with the Sudanese government and the nomadic Arab militias that it supports, the Janjaweed. But the international community, from the speechifying society of the United Nations Security Council to that exclusive dictators' club known as the Arab League, has shown little interest in stopping the slaughter. By their inaction -- our inaction -- we have become accomplices.
The peace treaty in the south provides for a sharing of the land's riches between the dictatorship and the people. The excruciatingly poor people of the region now have a chance at a measure of prosperity. The government no longer will enforce Muslim law there, and in a few years, the area will presumably be allowed to vote on full independence, rather than mere autonomy. But the strongmen in Khartoum are cleverly distracting the international community. They have learned their lesson, working to tighten their control and ''Arabize'' Darfur more than they did in the south.
Practically all the grievances against the government that created the conflict in the south are still the order of the day in Darfur, where the killings started after rebels said that their region, too, is marginalized, does not receive enough resources from the central government and should have a say in its own affairs.
The peace treaty just signed shows that this regime, which once harbored none other than Osama bin Laden, does respond to international pressure. Sadly, the international community has been unwilling to impose even an arms embargo on Khartoum, when much-stronger sanctions are fully justified.
Life for the people of Darfur has become a slow-motion nightmare of death and devastation. The only way to stop that is to impose strict sanctions on the regime and to push forth with a much-stronger presence of armed peace keepers than the minimal force now in place from the African Union. Without it, we are not only complicit in the horrors, but we risk a full unraveling of this weekend's peace treaty. After all, as a former Soviet refusenik once said, we should never trust a government that doesn't trust its own people.
If the killing in Darfur does not end, the joy in Juba could be short lived. We'll have ourselves, in addition to the perpetrators, to blame.

Frida Ghitis writes about world affairs.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion
/10641220.htm?1c

Pornthip -- Thailand's Superhero Doc

Thailand's CSI -- The Tsunami Super-Doc

Woman Doctor Dazzles Thailand:
After the Tsunami, a Superhero is Born
By Frida Ghitis

(Takua Pa, Thailand) When the tragedy that befell Thailand moves into the history books and is absorbed by the country’s legends, one Buddhist temple will serve as the stage for much of the drama played out in the weeks following the Tsunami, and one woman will remain a central character in a story of heartbreak, science and politics.

The place is Wat Yanyao. The Buddhist Temple that became a morgue for thousands of Tsunamis victims. And the unforgettable -- un-ignorable -- central character will be Pornthip Rojanasunan, the deputy chief of Thailand’s Central Institute of Forensic Science, the country’s legendary forensic chief, who led the victim identification process, took on the establishment, and in the process became a cult hero in Thailand.

For forty days after the December 26 waves smashed ashore, the temple became the hectic epicenter of identification efforts. Some 500 volunteers from dozens of countries worked to identify decomposing bodies, take information from grieving relatives, and handle the complicated logistics of dealing with more than 5000 dead bodies.

Amid the hundreds of scientists, victims’ relatives, and other professionals milling busily on the temple grounds, one tiny figure, with spiky purple-red hair, stood out in the crowd. Pornthip, as everyone knows her, ran the massive and grim operation until February 3, when a turf battle with Thai police ended with the Temple mortuary closing down and Pornthip forced out of the operation. By the time the bodies were wheeled out, the villagers in Takua Pa had become passionate in their support and their gratitude towards Pornthip, and ever more suspicious of the police.

Pornthip no longer plays a central role in this operation, but few doubt that she will be highly visible in the country’s future.

According to Sombat Chnatornvong, a long-time observer of Thai politics, “Dr. Pornthip’s courage has made her a hero in the eyes of most Thais.”

The government has now transferred refrigerated trucks holding the
remains of Western tourists to a new facility set up in cooperation with the Interpol in the resort island of Phuket, about 80 miles away. The overall identification process is now in the hands of the Police Forensic Institute. Pornthip, in a characteristically blunt statement, declared that “the autocrats” had gotten their way.

Before the government officially decided to send the foreigners’ bodies away, a bitter turf war erupted between Pornthip and the Royal Thai Police. With Pornthip’s flamboyant looks splashed over the front pages and her utterly non-traditional image appearing on television every single night, the dispute became high drama on a national scale, and a source of anguish for victims’ families. The Thai police say she is publicity hungry, and accused her of mishandling the identification process. Many bodies had to be exhumed because in the chaos of the first days they were stacked on top of each other and their DNA got mixed together.

Police officials urged the government to assign the victim identification task to the police, which would operate alongside the Interpol at the new state-of-the art forensic identification center. Villagers begged the government to keep their loved ones nearby.

Pornthip, ranked by local polls as the second most popular figure in Thailand, reminded everyone that Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra -- who ranked first in the same poll -- put her in charge of the operation. “My work will go on,” she said, “unless the prime minister says something else.”

Then she warned that villagers would mount protests if efforts to move their relatives’ remains went ahead.

The villagers promptly protested, setting roadblocks just as foreign dignitaries toured the destruction area, and demanding that identification work remain at the temple with Pornthip. The protests persuaded the government to delay the handover, and to move only the foreigners. But in the end, Pornthip lost the battle

Like hundreds of other Thais from nearby fishing villages, Plenphis Lumjamuang spent many days waiting outside the Temple, she said she wants to see her daughter’s body again and doesn’t trust the authorities to interfere with Pornthip’s work.

Verbal clashes between the irreverent, blunt-speaking Pornthip and the police are nothing new. She has long been a thorn in their holstered sides, accusing officials of incompetence and corruption and calling for forensic pathology to be taken out of the hands of police. When a botched government operation in the country’s restive South left scores dead, it was Dr. Pornthip who revealed scores of prisoners had suffocated after being detained. In Thailand she is known as one government official who can be trusted to tell the truth.

Her popular appeal has allowed her to openly criticize the government, because all political parties want her join to their ranks. In opinion surveys Thais say she is the most likely first female Prime Minister. Sombat Chantornvong says she is unlikely to turn to politics but, he adds, “If she wants to, she could have a bright political future.”

For now, she says she is not interested in politics; all she wants to do is help the people. And the people stand firmly on her side. “Pornthip is working hard,” said 53-year-old Suh Wath, who makes a living carrying passengers on his motorcycle taxi. “The police only want to take more money.” Like everyone else, he knows how much weight her diminutive body frame has lost: 5 pounds, from working tirelessly since the Tsunami struck.

In the early days, with her workers buckling under the emotional weight of their wrenching jobs, Pornthip explained, “I have to console them like their mother.” She allowed photographers to catch her, too, breaking down from sorrow. Her image continues to evolve, from chief pathologist to chief mourner, and chief speaker of the truth. On a makeshift memorial wall just inside Yanyao temple’s gates, visitors wrote words with their thoughts on the disaster. Several drew cartoons of the reed-thin, spiky-haired Pornthip. One showed her looking fierce, making a soldier cry. Another showed her wearing a cape and a big S on her chest, saying, “Leave no one behind.”

Much to her critics’ chagrin, Dr. Pornthip has become Thailand’s beloved superhero. And as superhero-watchers know, there is always another battle just over the horizon.