Real-life news: The situation in Burma.

I don't often make political posts, let alone posts about the politics of another country. But the situation in Burma makes all the trivial day-to-day crap of my life seem entirely unimportant.

I doubt many of you know much about Burma - as far as you're concerned, it's a random country in Asia, sandwiched between India and Thailand. The reason you won't know much about it is that it's governed by a military junta in a similar situation to North Korea. The current Burmese government seized power in a coup in 1962 and refused to yield that power to the winners of the only free and fair election in 1990. There has not been another election since, because the government knows that the people do not want it in charge. The woman who should be President of Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi, remains under house arrest despite being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

The official name of the country, by the way, has been Myanmar (pronounced Me-ANN-mar) since 1989, but Burmese peace activists refuse to use that name as it was chosen by the military government. There are complicated issues and ethnic tensions surrounding the name, as there are numerous distinct "tribes" of people, of whom the principal are the Burmese, the Shan and the Karen. If you're at all familiar with the difficult politics in Eastern Europe following the collapse of Communism, the way that ethnic groups with different cultures and religions had been lumped together into one country - that's not entirely unlike the situation in Burma.

Daily life in Burma is atrocious - the BBC ran a series of articles about life Inside Burma last year. Ordinary people dare not speak out - the prize for doing so is "disappearance". The only people who can safely organise any sort of protest are the Buddhist monks. Monks are greatly revered within Burma so cannot easily be made to "disappear" - though they may face arrest and beatings from the military police.

The current wave of protests started when the government increased the price of fuel in August. The price of petrol and diesel doubled, while the price of compressed gas - used to power buses - increased five times. When ordinary people can barely afford to live as it is, an increase in the cost of transport will leave people in desperate straits. Transport is necessary to take people to work and school and to carry staple food products around the country.

Initial reports were good. The government did not respond to last week's protests. On Saturday, monks were allowed to visit Aung San Suu Kyi. Sunday's march was the largest in 20 years. I'd hoped this would become the first ever completely peaceful overthrow of government. (There's something to be said about Buddhist monks leading a non-violent revolution.)

However, today's news is this: the military junta has warned it is ready to "take action" against the monks and other protesters.

If you are a praying sort of person, pray for the situation. Pray for a peaceful stepping down of the military regime and restoration of a fair and democratic government.  If you aren't a praying sort of person, send energy or positive thoughts. And whether you are religious or not, tell other people what is happening so they can pray or send energy or positive thoughts. (Yes, of course you may link to my post.)

As far as I know, there is still no safe way to send aid into the country. If you send money, it gets taken by the government to fund their projects, like randomly building a new state capital. All we can send is hope and strength for the people.

a theory of depression

I have a doctor who has been treating me for mental health stuff for years, who I trust with my life and medication even though he's "only" a GP with a special interest in mental health rather than a psychiatrist. He's a remarkably intelligent and perceptive man, and he likes to say things to patients like me to provoke us into taking charge of ourselves.

One of the things my doctor said a while ago that made me angry was this: there's a theory that only people who live in relatively safe situations experience depression. If you live in a country where you can't afford to eat and there's no other way of getting food; and you don't have access to clean water; and you don't know when you might get killed by a disease that modern medicine can cure, that you can't afford the treatment for; or when your government might decide to kill you for speaking out against it... then it would be normal to be angry, frustrated, anxious and depressed. Except the definition for clinical depression specifically excludes being upset because of those sorts of situational things, because they're perfectly reasonable things to be angry, frustrated, anxious or depressed about! Even if people there do feel depressed, you wouldn't necessarily experience the depression of people in more developed countries, because they don't have time - they're too busy trying to survive to be depressed. While the people who can't cope and decide to stop struggling don't have to seek death through active suicide, it will just happen.

It's a thought that makes me angry because I didn't choose to be depressed, and if a simple change of perspective would make my brain biochemistry work the way it's supposed to, I'd embrace it with all my heart and soul. Now I can make myself depressed just thinking about the fact that I'm so lucky in my daily life, and the worst I'm likely to experience on any given day is DRAMA on TEH INTARNETS! But there must be some truth that most living things in the wild undergo a daily struggle to survive; while some of us humans are now lucky enough to live in situations where we have no daily struggle to find food, shelter, warmth or companionship. Was our depression borne from us turning that struggle inwards? Do we, in fact, need some sort of struggle for survival in order to feel properly alive?

If only the depression didn't come with a general dampening down on positive emotions, it'd be great :/

Latest Burmese news is worse.

Currently, this is the top story on the BBC's news site: Burma's military leaders have imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew in the main cities Rangoon and Mandalay. Armed troops have now been deployed. As well as the night-time curfew there is also a ban on "gatherings of more than 5 people".

Whatever else may be wrong with George W Bush, I approve of his current stance. He has said that the US is "outraged" by Burma's human rights record and announced further sanctions.

Sanctions from the US are, however, unlikely to have much influence without China and India, Burma's main trading partners getting involved. China has remained largely silent about the current protests. However, with next year's Olympics taking place in Beijing, the Chinese government has something of a dilemma.

Links:
New photos of the protests.
This launches a media player to watch President Bush speak on the subject (about 5 1/2 minutes in).
This launches a media player to watch footage of the protests.

What can you do?

• Pray / send positive energy / thoughts for strength. It might sound sappy, but it could help.
  
• Tell other people what is happening. Link to the BBC or Wikipedia or other relatively unbiased news sources.
  
• US people: Write to your senators or state representatives to let them know you are pleased with the decision for sanctions. (This will work especially well if both you & your state representative are non-Bush supporters normally.)
  
• UK people: Contact your MP to register your concern for the situation and request the Government speak out/impose sanctions against the military junta. Find out who your MP is & get their email address.
  

I'll leave comments enabled and update these posts with links to e.g. suggestions of who to contact, lists of email addresses of elected officials in various countries.