The slaughter in Myanmar is worse than originally thought. Apparently thousands of Buddhist monks, non-violent by creed and tradition, have been butchered by the government of the country formerly known as Burma.
This article gives details and it also provokes a couple of questions. Why, for example does Marcus Oscarsson, the journalist who wrote the piece, print the name of a defector who provided the information when the defector's family remains in Burma?
This strikes me as terribly reckless at the very best. It's amazing to me that anyone would want to talk to journalists when so many show such insensitivity and concern for those they exploit as sources. Oscarsson says that his source "had no fears for his family's safety because his brother is a powerful general who will protect them," but why does Oscarsson take it upon himself to take that chance?
The second question this entire tragedy raises is for those who lean toward a pacifist solution to conflict. The Burmese interviewed for the story fear that the current protest movement, like the last one in 1988, has been extinguished for another generation. No one is more non-violent than Buddhist monks, but their attempts to reform their government have met with nothing but repression and murder each time they try to have their oppression eased. What are the lessons to be learned from both this terrible atrocity and the atrocity perpetrated by the Burmese junta's masters at Tianamen square?
Perhaps one lesson is that peaceful, non-violent protest generally succeeds only in countries where the government has a tradition of respecting human rights and where the government is accountable to the people - in other words, in Western democracies and states like India and Israel which are based on Western traditions.
In repressive regimes ruled by thugs, the non-violent solution may work, but experience seems to indicate that it's more likely to produce little more than the corpses of martyrs.
RLC
