MYANMAR AND SRI LANKA - III
I am glad that the response to Dileep Chansralal of Okinawa University could not be continued last Wednesday as Anuradhapura attack had to be given priority. The same day "The Island" Midweek Review carried an article by F. William Engdahl, and I would like to quote from his article at length. He seems to have obtained certain facts and the following quotation should be interesting to all those who are concerned with the plight of people in Myanmar.
"The tragedy of Burma, whose land area is about the size of George W. Bush's Texas, is that its population is being used as a human stage prop in a drama scripted in Washington by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the George Soros Open Society Institute, Freedom House and Gene Sharp's Albert Einstein Institution, a US intelligence asset used to spark "non-violent" regime change around the world on behalf of the US strategic agenda. Burma's "Saffron Revolution," like the Ukraine "Orange Revolution" or the Georgia "Rose Revolution" and the various Color Revolutions instigated in recent years against strategic states surrounding Russia, is a well-orchestrated exercise in Washington-run regime change, down to the details of "hit-and-run" protests with "swarming" mobs of Buddhists in saffron, internet blogs, mobile SMS links between protest groups, well-organized protest cells which disperse and reform. CNN made the blunder during a September broadcast of mentioning the active presence of the NED behind the protests in Myanmar.
In fact the US State Department admits to supporting the activities of the NED in Myanmar. The NED is a US Government-funded "private" entity whose activities are designed to support US foreign policy objectives, doing today what the CIA did during the Cold War. As well the NED funds Soros' Open Society Institute in fostering regime change in Myanmar. In an October 30 2003 Press Release the State Department admitted, "The United States also supports organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the Open Society Institute and Internews, working inside and outside the region on a broad range of democracy promotion activities." It all sounds very self-effacing and noble of the State Department. Is it though?
In reality the US State Department has recruited and trained key opposition leaders from numerous anti-government organizations. It has poured the relatively huge sum (for Myanmar) of more than $2.5 million annually into NED activities in promoting regime change in Myanmar since at least 2003. The US regime change, its Saffron Revolution, is being largely run according to informed reports, out of the US Consulate General in bordering Chaing Mai, Thailand. There activists are recruited and trained, in some cases directly in the USA, before being sent back to organize inside Myanmar. The USA's NED admits to funding key opposition media including the New Era Journal, Irrawaddy and the Democratic Voice of Burma radio.
The concert-master of the tactics of Saffron monk-led non-violence regime change is Gene Sharp, founder of the deceptively-named Albert Einstein Institution in Cambridge Massachusetts, a group funded by an arm of the NED to foster US-friendly regime change in key spots around the world. Sharp's institute has been active in Burma since 1989, just after the regime massacred some 3000 protestors to silence the opposition. CIA special operative and former US Military Attache in Rangoon, Col. Robert Helvey, an expert in clandestine operations, introduced Sharp to Burma in 1989 to train the opposition there in non-violent strategy. "
I would not vouch for all that Engdahl has written but we cannot just throw them away having known how the west has behaved in other countries. Engdahl has not written on the recent activities but I doubt whether it could be very much different. What has to be pointed out is that there are various political forces working underneath, and some people in their political innocence may not believe these. It is not difficult for the west to interfere in activities in a country through various means. Whether one agrees with Engdahl or not one cannot forget that the western countries do not want the governments that do not dance to their tune to continue.
Democracy has different forms and different interpretations. However, not only in Sri Lanka where we have proportional representation it is not easy to be elected as a member of Parliament or the legislature whatever it is called. Unless one is a member of a big political party one's chances of being a member of the legislature are very low. One would say that in countries such as Myanmar there are no elections even for the big parties to contest and that even if the elections are held either they are rigged or the results are ignored sometimes. Under such circumstances the people of the country and not the external powers such as the western countries that should eventually decide the fate of the existing government. In Myanmar even if one believes a fraction of what Engdahl has said it is clear that there is external influence and the people are mere puppets in the hands of external agencies.
With respect to so called human rights, freedom of press etc., the situation is not very rosy even in the west. As we have argued on several occasions there are no human rights as such but only individual rights as against the state. The so called "human rights" is a concept created by the western Christian modernity that emphasized the role of the individual as against that of the society in general. In the medieval Europe the individual as such was a non entity and the society as a whole was considered supreme in the Catholic Chinthanaya. The so called Renaissance was a movement for the liberation of the individual from the society as a whole. The western man who can think only in terms of binary oppositions, a fact that has been recognized by Derrida as well, shifted from society as a whole to the individual giving the latter the freedom to exploit avenues to satisfy the desires demanded by the body and the mind. This shift from one end to the other or from one condition to its binary opposition is a result of the inadequacy of the two valued twofold Aristotelian logic used by the Greeks that was adopted by the westerners in general. It is this shift from the society to the individual, together with abstract thought borrowed from the Jews and the axiomatic system borrowed from the Greeks again that finally led to western science and capitalism.
These individual rights were strengthened with time in Europe especially with the French revolution but now they are termed human rights by the western intellectuals. To begin with who is this human that they are concerned with? The western sociologists who find it difficult to conceptualize a nation as a general concept talk of a generalized human without defining what is meant by that concept. There are individual rights as against the society or the state but no human rights as such.
It is clear that these individual rights differ from state to state and from time to time. When the states are not very strong ironically they tend to prune or cut down the individual rights. In the west the individuals did not have many rights at the beginning (after the Renaissance) and as the state became stronger it was possible to give more rights to the individual. (A strong state knows how to curtail individual rights when necessary.) However, when the state is threatened even in the west the individual rights are cut down. The so called emergency declarations, with curfews and restrictions on press freedom illustrate how states under threat behave. It is well known in war situations the freedom of media is restricted in the west. The western states are now stronger and established and hence can afford to give a number of individual rights.
However what about countries such as Sri Lanka and Myanmar where the western countries are known to interfere with internal activities? The west when it does not see eye to eye with a particular government of a "third world country" makes use of all the resources within and outside the country to topple the government. The interference by the west is justified not only under concepts such as abstract democracy and abstract human rights as if the west is the custodian of these, but by making use of concepts such as limited sovereignty and failed state coined by the western intellectuals. Now what do our intellectuals (Nan who writes to the Sunday Island had referred to me as an intellectual. I must mention that I am neither an intellectual nor an educated person in the western tradition though the western education I received tried unsuccessfully to convert me to such a creature!) trained in the western tradition do when the western intellectuals bombard us with their third rate concepts? The "third world" intellectuals just repeat the concepts and try to become more educated in the process!
The states of these so called third world countries are forced to give into the "international community" with the help of intellectual thuggery or intellectual terrorism of the westerners and are denied the freedom even to fight for the sovereignty of the countries. However these concepts are applied as and when the western countries want. They would apply them in the case of Myanmar but not in the case of Pinochet's Chile. In Sri Lanka the west will make a big cry over the human rights in the North but when the JVP was being massacred the west did not have any interest in human rights. Those days even Bhikkus were tortured but the pious Buddhists in Sri Lanka and the Bishops whose hearts melt like snow in hell over the torture of Bhikkus in Myanmar did not have ears to hear them. It is not my intention to condone the action of the military government in Myanmar over the torture and killings of Bhikkus but all that is said is leave it to the people to topple that government irrespective of how long it takes to do so.
Why should the foreigners interfere with the political process of a country? If the westerners are interested in the welfare of the people they should not impose economic sanctions and cut loans to these countries thereby aggravating the problems of the people. There is no moral right for the west to engage in such activities and it is a crime against the people to use them as an instrument to topple governments not liked by the west. The west is also responsible for the present plight of the people in Myanmar.
In the case of Myanmar, according to Engdahl, the west interferes because of economic reasons. Though economics may be playing a certain role, it is not easy to forget the cultural factor involved. It happens that Myanmar is a Theravada country with a Theravada culture and western Christian modernity has an axe to grind against Theravada culture. In these articles we refer to the Theravada and Christian cultures (or the Chinthanaya as the case may be) and not to the religions as such. Western Christian modernity is determined to spread and establish its Judaic Christian culture and Greek Judaic Christian Chinthanaya throughout the world and would not tolerate any resistance on its path.
Finally a word about Aung Sang Suu Kyi. She may appear to be upholding democracy. However, she is upholding the democracy in the sense described above. It is true that she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize but the prize is not apolitical. When even the Nobel Prize for Physics has a political and a cultural content it is futile to talk of an apolitical Nobel Peace Prize. If Chandrika Kumaratunga was able to get the 2000 amendment to the constitution passed through the Parliament she also would have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. These prizes from Nobel Prize to our own State awards for Literature (rajya sahithya sammana) are neither neutral nor objective. The very fact that Aung Sang Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Prize for peace speaks volumes for the role she plays in Myanmar.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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