Rev. Danny Fisher

Below is a bit more on the issue of whether to call the country “Burma” or “Myanmar” from my great friend and gracious host in New Haven, Mr. Phil Miller. It’s the Washington Post‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning national security reporter Dana Priest on the paper’s policy regarding the matter. (They’re one of the few major newspapers that call it “Burma.”)

I blogged about this issue last year in this post, and more recently in this one. I used to use “Myanmar” at the blog (in deference to the United Nations), but I now use “Burma” (in solidarity with the people of the country and Prime Minister-elect Aung San Suu Kyi).

Sea Isle City, N.J.: Myanmar vs Burma? Why does The Post go with Burma? Does the answer involve semantics, politics, U.S. government position or all the above? Thanks!

Dana Priest: I am really not sure. We are one of the only media outlets left to still use Burma. Let me see if I can get a quick answer for you.

Dana Priest: Here’s the short answer on Burma from editors: We’ve just never accepted the ruling junta as a legitimate government and didn’t allow them to rename the country in our pages when it took power.

Here’s a longer answer from in-house country expert:

The primary reason for not using “Myanmar” is that it was a phony name change. On top of that, this change was made by an unelected regime. In fact, “Burma” and “Myanmar” stem from the same root word. Burma comes from the vernacular form of that word. Myanmar is the literary form. This makes a bit more sense if you consider the Burmese pronunciations, which sound something like “pa-mah” and “mya-mah.” The Burmese have used both names for hundreds of years. (The Wikipedia entry on Burma has a pretty good explanation here.)

Essentially, what the military junta did in 1989 was not to actually change the name of the country, but to change the way it is rendered in English. What right did they have to do this, you might ask. The answer is: none whatsoever. The fact is, we have names in English for lots of countries, cities and other places that are different from the names in the local language. For example: Spain for España, Germany for Deutschland, Italy for Italia, Rome for Roma, Florence for Firenze, Egypt for Mesr, India for Bharat, China for Zhongguo, Japan for Nihon or Nippon, Thailand for Prathet Thai, Bangkok for Krungthep. The list goes on and on. And, of course, other countries have their own names for the United States of America.

The argument is made that “Myanmar” is used by the United Nations, and that a country can call itself what it wants. Well, the United Nations will go along with anything (which may have been what the junta was counting on), but the Post has used its own common-sense judgment in a number of cases. For example, the Ivory Coast government insists on being called Cote d’Ivoire in English, and the U.N. lists it that way. We have stuck with Ivory Coast. Libya once insisted on being called the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, and its official name on the English-language list of U.N. member states today is Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. We passed on those, too. Other examples are North Korea, Laos and East Timor.

Sure, a country can call itself what it wants, but that doesn’t mean it can change a perfectly valid name in English. Since the Burmese junta didn’t really change the name of the country, there is really no reason to quit using the time-honored English-language name for it.

The Post did go along with “Myanmar” for a while there initially. But even then it was awkward: we continued to use “Burmese” as the adjective and as the noun for the people. I guess “Myanmarese” was more than anyone could stomach.

(The French, by the way, never seemed to have this problem. The government and news media have continued to use “Birmanie,” and that’s that.)

Even if “Myanmar” were a real name change, the fact that it was imposed by an unelected regime that is among the world’s most repressive and unrepresentative ought to give us pause. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, which won 80 percent of the seats in the 1990 elections and has a far better claim to represent the will of the Burmese people, rejects “Myanmar” and continues to call the country Burma in English.

So why did the junta do it? The real reason remains a mystery, although the ostensible reason (having to do with being more ethnically inclusive) was pretty obviously bogus. But this is a crew that has long been guided by superstitution, astrology, soothsaying and numerology. In any case, the move came after the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators by the military in 1988, and it may have had something to do with wiping the slate clean.

It also had the effect of conferring legitimacy on the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), which seized power after the massacres. The reasoning may have been: we declare a name change, the rest of the world (or at least the U.N.) goes along with it, and the Burmese people thus get the message that our junta is internationally recognized and respected.

The question for us is: why should we play that game? Clearly, we shouldn’t. It’s as if Hitler had demanded that we start calling Germany “Deutschland.” What would our response have been then?

Phil Ryan over at the Tricycle Editors’ Blog and Daniel Burke over at the Religion News Blog gather up some good stories and features from major news sources that are relevant to Buddhism and its practice and/or study. Do take a look.

And just to let you all know where I am on the whole Geshe Michael Roach thing (because I know you’re all losing sleep waiting to know what I think about it), I think what he and his partner are doing sounds like an interesting practice, but I think he probably ought to disrobe if he’s going to do it. Why wear the robes if you’re not actually going to be a monk? One needn’t cling to the robes to have a deep practice and/or be a teacher–that’s spiritual materialism. What he’s doing is also probably a little disrespectful to the efforts of those who take the vinaya more seriously as a practice.

The editors of The Nation offer their opinions about the situation in Burma post-Cyclone Nargis:

The catastrophe unfolding in Burma may have been precipitated by an act of nature, but its root causes and current dimensions are man-made. In the wake of Cyclone Nargis, the military junta that rules the country has made a series of reprehensible decisions, bringing death, disease and destruction to a people it is entrusted to protect. As we go to press, the UN estimates that up to 102,000 Burmese have perished; some 220,000 are missing; and close to 2.5 million are in dire need of clean water, shelter, food and medical treatment. Yet, fear- ful of an alliance between pro-democracy forces and foreigners, the Myanmar regime initially rebuffed offers of assistance and so far has allowed in only a trickle of emergency supplies and almost no relief workers. Much of the aid that has gotten through has been confiscated by the military and distributed to its members or sold on the black market, and the government has even blocked some of its citizens from distributing rice.

Tragically, long before the storm, the people of Burma were enduring a humanitarian disaster brought about by political means. Since 1962 successive military regimes have dismantled Burma’s once enviable healthcare system–today the state spends just 3 percent of its budget on healthcare while devoting 40 percent to its armed forces. The result: Burma’s health sector ranks 190 out of 191 nations; it has one of the highest TB rates in the world; and a third of its children are chronically malnourished. Moreover, as part of a recent crackdown, the junta imposed rigid travel restrictions on aid workers, forcing the Global Fund to Fight AIDS and Médecins Sans Frontières to withdraw from the country. Other groups, like the International Red Cross, were ordered to close field offices.

The acute nature of the crisis and the regime’s intransigence and corruption create an agonizing humanitarian dilemma. Students and an association of Burmese monks, as well as the National League for Democracy, the party of imprisoned Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, have called on foreign governments to intervene immediately–without the consent of the junta, with or without UN authorization. Humanitarian intervention in Burma may be justified by the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2005, which obliges the international community to step in when a state can’t or won’t protect its people from crimes against humanity. Efforts to put the matter before the Security Council have been stymied by China, patrons of the junta, but the United States has yet to put its full diplomatic weight behind a resolution. It should do so now. The specter of UN action might cause the junta to relent; and a resolution would at least force Chinese officials, ahead of the Beijing Olympics and on the heels of the devastating Sichuan earthquake, to rebuke the Myanmar regime or vote publicly to deny lifesaving aid.

Absent UN authorization, the United States and other countries should initiate airdrops of rations, although it’s a flawed compromise that can’t provide aid workers or medical treatment. A coalition of nations including the United States, preferably led by regional states, could also act independently–but that should be considered only after every UN option has been exhausted. Any kind of intervention, UN-led or not, risks retaliation from the junta, which could endanger aid distribution. To guard against this and to distinguish this intervention from cases like Iraq that used humanitarianism as a fig leaf, any relief efforts should be strictly confined to providing aid in the delta region. The Burmese are looking to the skies and shores for help. It is politics–not nature–that imperils them now.

There’s a fascinating and painfully sad piece by Tyche Hendricks in today’s San Francisco Chronicle. Check it out:

As the urgency intensifies to get food, water and medicine into the worst-affected areas of Burma 11 days after the country was hit by Cyclone Nargis, the country’s military government continues to baffle the world by stonewalling international disaster relief.

The government has taken pains to appear on state television as the sole source of humanitarian relief, even appropriating donations from others so that soldiers can hand out the aid. The United Nations warns of a second catastrophe unless a huge aid effort is begun immediately, and Buddhist monks and other Burmese citizens are quietly tending to the sick and hungry.

The junta’s bewildering resistance stems from its fear that outside influence would weaken its control and from a distorted desire to maintain the impression that it is compassionate in the eyes of Burma’s Buddhist majority, scholars say.

“The regime is trying to control the aid distribution because they want to be the ones to offer it ceremonially, partly to show they have legitimacy,” said University of Wisconsin anthropologist Ingrid Jordt, who has lived in Burma as a practicing Buddhist nun.

“They are the patrons, the distributors of largesse,” said Bruce Matthews, a Burma expert and professor emeritus of religion at Acadia University in Nova Scotia. “What anybody gets is what the military wants you to get. Theoretically, they are Buddhists. They care about their Buddhist image.”

While the Burmese government’s actions in the wake of the cyclone are rooted in its ties to the Buddhist religion, they threaten to destabilize the unique triangular relationship between the government, the people and the monks.

Buddhism is central to Burma, and perhaps 80 percent of the country’s 48 million people are practicing Buddhists in the Theravada tradition. The sangha, or monastic community, comprises 400,000 monks and nuns, equal in size to the armed forces. In Burmese history, the monks served as intermediaries between the kings and the peasantry.

Even today the monks depend for their meals on alms they collect daily in begging bowls. And the government gains karmic points by donating to the monasteries.

But the military regime broke its bond with the sangha last September when it attacked and killed protesting monks who waged a saffron revolution, upending their bowls to refuse alms from the government and marching against an untenable increase in fuel and food prices.

For the Burmese people, the ties to the monastic order are woven into the fabric of daily life.

“There’s a reciprocal relationship,” said Michele McDonald, a Hawaii-based Buddhist teacher who has studied in Burma. “People love to cook for the monks and nuns. They love to visit them, because they receive so much back.”

In the days since the cyclone hit, homeless refugees have gravitated toward the Buddhist temples seeking help. The monasteries have become the Superdomes of the disaster, one scholar observed, comparing the sturdy pagodas to the New Orleans stadium that sheltered victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Monks and nuns have been sharing their modest stores of rice and rainwater, and providing floor space and whatever medical care they can offer.

But even these humble acts of kindness appear to be taken as a challenge by the Burmese junta. News reports coming out of Burma in recent days suggest that soldiers are blocking the doors to some temples and warning abbots they must turn out the storm’s refugees.

“Unfortunately the regime sees their compassion as a threat,” said McDonald.

The Buddhism practiced by the generals running the country is not mainstream Theravada Buddhism, but involves a high degree of mysticism and superstition that harkens back to pre-Buddhist animist traditions, according to Priscilla Clapp, who served as the top U.S. diplomat in Burma from 1999 to 2002.

“They pretend they’re traditional Theravada Buddhists, but they really aren’t,” she said. “They indoctrinate their officers especially and also the rank and file soldiers politically. … So they can justify really outrageous actions on the basis of Buddhism, including attacks on monks and letting people starve. It has everything to do with keeping them in power.”

Alan Clements, is a Vancouver-based Buddhist teacher who has written a book of interviews with Burma’s democratically elected Prime Minister Aung San Suu Kyi, who lives under house arrest in Rangoon. He urged world leaders to appeal to the conscience of the Burmese generals.

“The essence of Buddhism is compassion,” he said. “Elementary school children in Burma understand compassion in a simple way: put yourself in the body and mind of someone else and ask yourself what you would like done in a moment of suffering.” He would say to the generals, “You’re Buddhist: Where’s your compassion?”

Many Burmese citizens are going around government authorities and beginning to organize themselves to respond to the disaster, Clapp said. Grassroots Burmese groups are working with monks and with the handful of international aid agencies on the ground to improvise solutions such as fashioning replacements for lost rain barrels to collect the monsoon rains for drinking water.

“It’s that kind of activity that will eventually overcome the grip the military has on the country: learning how to work together to organize and make things happen,” Clapp said.