Here are some new news items on Burma:
Today’s Boston Globe features a powerful op-ed piece by Chris Beyrer, director of the Center for Public Health and Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Frank Donaghue, CEO for Physicians for Human Rights. Their subject is the “unnatural disaster” in Burma: a “profoundly inhumane” system for disaster relief in Burma in which “good Samaritans [are] punished for their compassion.” This is a must-read.
Variety reports that Burma VJ–Reporting from a Closed Country, a new documentary “which describes the work of a group of citizen reporters who secretly filmed the uprising against the military dictatorship in Burma in September 2007,” won the top prize at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, “the world’s top event for documentary features.”
In a new piece as part of her ongoing series for the Democratic Voice of Burma, author Gemma Dursley considers alternatives to nonviolent resistance and concludes (as I and others have):
…It is crucial to understand that any attempt at violent resistance would run into the same obstacles that impede nonviolent action, while possessing none of the advantages of the latter. Instead of allowing themselves to be led by the military into a futile armed confrontation, activists should concentrate on circumventing the obstacles to collective action imposed by the junta, presenting a coherent and united movement for change, and maintaining a commitment to nonviolent methods.
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