Panelists discussed the serious problems of murder and rape in Burma and suggested that sanctions be placed on the country at Monday's conference "Challenges of Nonviolent Actions - Burma: A Case Study."
Aung Din, the U.S. Campaign for Burma Policy director, called Gen. Than Shwe, the leader of Burma, "one of the worst dictators in the world."
The current military regime imprisoned Din for four years after he demonstrated against the government. Din said that the regime in Burma (also known as Myanmar) is responsible for some of the world's worst atrocities, including thousands of observed murders, hundreds of reported rapes and the forced recruitment of 70,000 child soldiers. This is the problem, he said, when the government answers to nobody.
Panelist Khin Phyuhtway, a member of the Democratic Party for a New Society, said dozens of youths of the All-Burma Student Federation are wasting away in prison. For many, their only crime was demonstrating, she said, an illegal action in the military-ruled state.
Din said that when the United States and the European Union sanction and refuse to trade with Burma, it hurts the regime. He said that he believes more Asian countries must pressure Burma in similar ways.
Din also spoke about the diversity and generosity of the Burmese people, many of whom starve while the government uses 50 percent of its money to fund its military, he said.
However, Min Zin, a broadcaster with Radio Free Asia, said that the military is robbing Burma of its culture. Still, Zin, a former student revolutionary, said that "nonviolence is not a matter of principle. It is a matter of strategy" - advice given to him by Nelson Mandela.
Zin said that people who oppose the government must demonstrate nonviolently and in creative, clever and strategic ways. The opposition can outsmart and outmaneuver the military, but it must first find ways to organize, space to discuss its solutions and ways to communicate its message, said Zin, who formerly edited the English-language newspaper in Burma, Irrawaddy Magazine, available online at www.irrawaddy.org.
The conference, presented at AU by the Free Burma Coalition, was attended by more than two dozen people, many of whom stayed to ask questions or look at the new "For the Lady" music CD, produced by U2, Sting, R.E.M. and others to benefit the Burmese nonviolent struggle for freedom. The CD is available at most retail stores.
