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What We Owe the Burmese
What We Owe the Burmese
By Fred Hiatt (Editor in Chief), Washington Post
October 1, 2007
An upheaval like the pro-democracy uprising taking place in Burma over the
past month tends to shake up certainties that had seemed self-evident.
Certainties such as the primacy of justice. Or the sanctity of the Olympic
Games.
Despite an academic industry devoted to the subject, no one can predict when
an oppressed people will find that precise combination of hopelessness and
hope, impatience and solidarity, and recklessness and anger that leads it to
rebel. Nor can anyone answer the most important question facing Burma now:
When will the boys and men who prop up a corrupt regime with their guns and
prison cells decide that they have had enough -- that they no longer want to
shoot unarmed Buddhist monks or round up young girls for possession of
cellphones with cameras?
But this much is sure: The first process is rare and precious enough, and
the second so difficult to initiate, that those on the outside must do
whatever they can to support and encourage both. We're a long way from
having fulfilled that obligation.
Over the past decade, human rights advocates have united behind the notion
of accountability for dictators and war criminals. They persuaded most of
the world's nations to sign on to the International Criminal Court. The
theory is no mercy, no compromise, no temporizing.
No one deserves trial more than Burma's Gen. Than Shwe and his cronies. They
have looted their country's natural wealth and turned its army into a
monster that rapes and press-gangs its compatriots. More than 1.5 million
people have been routed from their villages, often with bayonets having been
thrust through their rice pots to ensure that they go hungry. Now the regime
is rounding up nonviolent protesters in the most violent way, and -- if past
practice is any indicator -- torturing many of them in some of the world's
bleakest prisons.
Yet if amnesty for these despicable men could buy release for their country
-- if we could trade their safe passage to China and a guarantee of
undisturbed retirement for a chance to free 2,000 or more political
prisoners, unshackle democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and help Burma's 50
million people onto a path to self-governance, would we reject such a deal?
If we could split the regime by promising leniency to the generals who
refuse to take part in the crackdown, would we be too pure to do so?
I know the arguments against such compromises, and they are powerful: the
difficulty of achieving national reconciliation without national justice;
the value of warning future dictators that they will pay for future crimes;
the gall of monsters going free. And still, given the unbearable alternative
of watching a people be crushed for the second time in two decades, I would
do anything to guide those monsters to pleasant seaside villas.
And here's something else I would do: Tell China that, as far as the United
States is concerned, it can have its Olympic Games or it can have its regime
in Burma. It can't have both.
Here, too, I understand the arguments against: China's rulers are gradually
becoming more responsible in the world; to threaten their Games would only
get their backs up. The Games themselves offer a chance to enhance
international understanding; if we let world affairs interfere, there will
always -- every two years -- be some cause. The athletes have trained for
years; they deserve their chance.
And yet: Hundreds of thousands of Burmese have risked everything -- their
homes, their families, their lives -- to be free. They have done so with
nothing on their side but courage, faith and the hope that the world might
stand with them. And they still have a chance to succeed.
Whether they do depends mostly on decisions made inside Burma. But people
and countries outside can have some effect. Burma's neighbors in Southeast
Asia could do more. The world's largest democracy, India, could do far more.
China could do most of all.
China's Communist rulers have reasons not to help Burma's democrats. They
enjoy privileged access to Burma's timber and other resources, for one. Even
more fundamentally, dictators will shudder when they see another
illegitimate regime threatened by people power.
What could push them the other way? Their desire to be seen as responsible
players, maybe. Their desire to have their one-party rule recognized as more
sophisticated and legitimate than the paranoid generals of Burma, maybe.
And, maybe, their deep desire to host a successful Olympics next summer.
If a threat to those Games -- delivered privately, if that would be most
effective, with no loss of face -- could help tip the balance, then let the
Games not begin. Some things matter more.
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