Rev. Danny Fisher

A couple of days ago, in the comments for a post I wrote about the current situation in Myanmar/Burma post-Cyclone Nargis, a fellow blogger left me a note saying that I should call the nation “Burma” because that’s what the country’s people call it. As I said in response (and in a post from last year), it’s not quite as simple as that. Yes, the junta renamed the country Myanmar in 1969, but this was done as part of their efforts to (in the words of Mark Aspillera) “phase out the English spellings of native words used during the time of British colonial rule.” Both “Myanmar” and “Burma” have their pros and their cons. “Burma” is used by the people, yes, but it’s also a rather unappealing colonial relic. “Myanmar” was foisted upon everyone by this monstrously oppressive junta, but it’s also used by the United Nations and quite a few news services.

As I said last fall, I’ve historically opted for “Myanmar” in deference to the UN. In the last couple days, though–since that comment–I’ve been mulling this decision over. I suppose I’m being somehow proper by using “Myanmar.” But what should really be my standard for making a call on this? Journalistic propriety or something higher? My sympathies here are obviously for the people and Prime Minister-elect Aung San Suu Kyi. They, as my commenter says, call it “Burma.”

From now on, so will I. If only to offer my own small act of defiance against the junta.

Still, I don’t find “Burma” any less problematic than “Myanmar”–for me, it’s a politically incorrect colonial holdover. I look forward to a day when the Burmese people can speak for themselves and tell us what they’d like their nation to be called. As Aspillera says:

There is no definitive source in nature [right now] to say whether the name’s really Burma or Myanmar. The only real source is the country’s people themselves, and as of right now, they’re not exactly in a position to speak.

This from By My Hand and Heart Alone…: an open Congressional Subcommittee hearing on “Burma in the Aftermath of Cyclone Nargis: Death, Displacement, and Humanitarian Aid” is scheduled for this coming Tuesday, May 20, 2008. Here are the details:

SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING NOTICE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20515

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ASIA, THE PACIFIC, AND THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT

Eni F. H. Faleomavaega (D-AS), Chairman

May 13, 2008

TO: MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

You are respectfully requested to attend the following OPEN hearing of the Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the Global Environment, to be held in Room 2172 of the Rayburn House Office Building:

DATE: Tuesday, May 20, 2008

TIME: 10:00 a.m.

SUBJECT: Burma in the Aftermath of Cyclone Nargis: Death, Displacement, and Humanitarian Aid

WITNESSES: Panel I
The Honorable Scot Marciel
Deputy Assistant Secretary
Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs
U.S. Department of State

Mr. Greg Gottlieb
Deputy Assistant Administrator
Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance
U.S. Agency for International Development

Panel II
Mr. Joel Charny
Vice President for Policy
Refugees International

Mr. Jeremy Woodrum
Director
U.S. Campaign for Burma

NOTE: Witnesses may be added.

By Direction of the Chairman

The Committee on Foreign Affairs seeks to make its facilities accessible to persons with disabilities. If you are in need of special accommodations, please call 202/225-5021 at least four business days in advance of the event, whenever practicable. Questions with regard to special accommodations in general (including availability of Committee materials in alternative formats and assistive listening devices) may be directed to the Committee as noted above.

Burma Cyclone offers a post today that includes comments from His Holiness the Dalai Lama about his reaction to things happening in Myanmar post-Cyclone Nargis. Because the post offers helpful, pithy bullet-points about the situation right now, I thought it might be useful to paste it all below. (His Holiness’ comments are at the end.)

In an informative article written for Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service, which just got filed a few minutes ago, the UN’s World Meteorological Center sent out a message saying another cyclone is forming in the Burma area. The article states “it is not clear yet where the landfall will be or when it will become a full-fledged cyclone.”

Here’s a list of other informative bits from the article:


• Relief effort is only delivering an estimated one-tenth of the supplies needed in the delta area.
  Burma’s State Television said the death toll has risen from 32,000 to 34,273 and the number of missing is 27,838. (The UN estimates over 100,000 dead).
  
• Heavy tropical rains are making matters worse.
  
• World Food Programme said it was able to move less than 20 percent of the 375 tonnes of food into the devastated Delta.
  
• The military junta says it has allowed ‘aid from any nation’ to reach inside Burma but does not want foreigners distributing it.
  
• The UN principle of “responsibility to protect” is underutilized – ‘the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) doctrine out lines the conditions in which the international com munity is obligated to intervene in another country, militarily if necessary, to prevent genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other atrocities.’
  
• Burma called an “outpost of tyranny” by Washington – a phrase originally used by Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, in 2005 to describe “certain countries where she believes the government is oppressive and shows contempt for human rights and democracy.”
  
• The Dalai Lama, who has traditionally refrained from making comments about the majority Buddhist-populated Burma, broke his silence on the issue. “I am shocked by the destruction, especially by the high number of people who have perished and as a result this catastrophe has compounded the problems of poverty that already exists in Burma,” he said.Read this full article here.

As I mentioned in a comment at Burma Cyclone, the Special Broadcasting Service’s report is not exactly accurate on the point that His Holiness the Dalai Lama has traditionally “refrained” from commenting on Myanmar. This past fall, he offered his “full support” to those who demonstrated against the junta–regular readers might remember this post and this post from last fall.

Visit http://www.burmaitcantwait.org.

[Incidentally, this footage is recycled from a past interview with Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh.]

The Washington Post released an exclusive and deeply troubling report today which concludes that the sedation of deportees by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is far more common than officials are admitting. Authors Amy Goldstein and Dana Priest write:

The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.

The government’s forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the “pre-flight cocktail,” as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane.

[...]

…The Washington Post has identified [more than 250 cases] in which the government has, without medical reason, given drugs meant to treat serious psychiatric disorders to people it has shipped out of the United States since 2003 — the year the Bush administration handed the job of deportation to the Department of Homeland Security’s new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE.

Involuntary chemical restraint of detainees, unless there is a medical justification, is a violation of some international human rights codes. The practice is banned by several countries where, confidential documents make clear, U.S. escorts have been unable to inject deportees with extra doses of drugs during layovers en route to faraway places.

Federal officials have seldom acknowledged publicly that they sedate people for deportation. The few times officials have spoken of the practice, they have understated it, portraying sedation as rare and “an act of last resort.” Neither is true, records and interviews indicate.

Records show that the government has routinely ignored its own rules, which allow deportees to be sedated only if they have a mental illness requiring the drugs, or if they are so aggressive that they imperil themselves or people around them.

Stung by lawsuits over two sedation cases, the agency changed its policy in June to require a court order before drugging any deportee for behavioral rather than psychiatric reasons. In at least one instance identified by The Post, the agency appears not to have followed those rules.

[...]

An analysis by The Post of the known sedations during fiscal 2007, ending last October, found that 67 people who got medical escorts had no documented psychiatric reason. Of the 67, psychiatric drugs were given to 53, 48 of whom had no documented history of violence, though some had managed to thwart an earlier attempt to deport them. These figures do not include two detainees who immigration officials said were given sedatives for behavioral rather than psychiatric reasons before being deported on group charter flights, which are often used to return people to Mexico and Central America.

[...]

Internal government records show that most sedated deportees…recieved a cocktail of three drugs that included Haldol, also known as haloperidol, a medication normally used to treat schizophrenia and other acute psychotic states. Of the 53 deportees without a mental illness who were drugged in 2007, The Post‘s analysis found, 50 were injected with Haldol, sometimes in large amounts.

They were also given Ativan, used to control anxiety, and all but three were given Cogentin, a medication that is supposed to lessen Haldol’s side effects of muscle spasms and rigidity. Two of the 53 deportees received Ativan alone. One person’s medications were not specified.