"Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that economic sanctions imposed by the United States and other Western governments had failed to pressure the repressive Burmese government, signaling a potentially major shift in U.S.policy." -- Clinton Signals Possible Shift in U.S. Policy on Burma, The Washington Post, 18 Feb 2009
Dear Burma/Myanmar Friends,
In case some of you are unaware of the most recent official view of the National League for Democracy (and Aung San Suu Kyi) towards sanctions, and the possible policy shift on Burma signaled by the new Obama Administration.
The hawkish Hilary Clinton is reportedly softening USG's official tone towards what some indulgently call 'thuggish' generals. For those of you who are not Burmese, but have used the NLD and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi for your own ideological and organizational/campaign benefits please take note that the NLD has SPOKEN on the question of sanctions.
Whether or not Senior General Than Shwe decided to dialogue with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi - which is not a likely scenario although in politics one should never say 'never'- is irrelevant to the fact that sanctions are NOT 'beneficial' to our country and our people.
The Burma Campaign UK and other zealots have long engaged in mud-slinging against even those of us Burmese natives who have spent decades, having given up families, careers, and youth to push for change through various means, arrogating to themselves the right to speak for the people, hiding, as we would say in Burmese under the skirt or longyi of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
These overzealous campaigners - usually non-native, orientalists - have turned sanctions into a type of political/policy fetish. These men and women have spread manufactured and groundless slanders against anyone who has been saying what the NLD has now come out and said - the sanctions are not beneficial to Burma and her people. They would resort to McCarthist tactics of calling us 'pro-regime', 'spies/informers', etc., never mind that we risk everything they hold dear to be pro-change activists.
Now Aung San Suu Kyi's party has spoken publicly on the undesirability of sanctions against our country. I wonder around whose longyi or skirt these Western campaigners and professionals will wrap themselves, in order to continue advocatingfor more sanctions against my country and collecting more financial contributions to their misguided, festishized sanctions campaigns.
It's about time that these political mercenaries look themselves in the mirror and ask in whose name they are demanding more sanctions, now that the party that presumably speaks for "the People" has stated its view officially.
To be labor the obvious, and for the record, I have nothing but utter disgust and disdain towards those 'pro-democracy' campaigners in UK who talk the talk, but don't walk the walk, that is, barking loudly about freedom of speech in my country, and yet attempt to attack us cowardly through whisper campaigns and slanders whenever we speak out against their sanctions fetish, dogma and orthodoxy.
Now the Lady and her party have spoken. They should listen. But I am not holding my breath.
Zarni
mobile: 079 63 66 84 61
