Global Health and Foreign Policy Blog

Two photos from a friend witnessing the Saffron Revolution in Burma. Good information has been difficult to come by as the junta attempts to enforce a media blackout. Official (and by that I mean the military junta) data reports 9 deaths, while a recent high-level defector reports thousands of deaths. Here is our friend’s interview with a monk about events at the Eastern Gate of Shwedagon Pagoda:

“On Thursday we were praying at the Kyethune Phaya. There were 30 of us. It was around noon. Then we heard the sound of the soldiers coming. Banging their sticks on their shields. Without warning they entered the pagoda and started to beat us with their sticks. Some had swords on the end of their guns. They beat a young monk, only 15 years old. He fell down, bleeding on the head.” The young monk ran and escaped. He learned later that some of his companions had been killed, most of them beaten and taken away in the “J” car – the black van with bars on the windows, a sight now common near the scene of any demonstration.

The elderly monk then went on to explain, “They (the Government) are afraid. They know this is different from ’88. The Sangha (religious authority) did not lead the strikes in ’88. They (the soldiers) are going to the monasteries at night. Pretending to be lay people. Entering the monastery, beating and taking away the monks. Even the young boys. They raided Waizayandar on Thursday. On Friday they cleaned the monastery and replaced the monks. With men who are not real monks or with monks who side with the government.”

“They have taken 3000 monks. They do not put them in prison. They take them to the many military camps around the country. The monks are refusing the small bowl of rice being offered to them by the soldiers. The soldiers offer it to them after 1pm to make them break their vows. No one is allowed to see them. We are worried.”

“But we know. We knew what would happen. We see the situation in the country. We go around and we beg for our food. We see the rich and the poor. We see that a very few people are very rich. They are all the families and relations of the Generals. We see that the people are getting poorer. They cannot even feed themselves. We see this. We cannot ignore it.”

“We don’t know how long it will take. One month. One year. But too many of us have died already. We cannot go back.”

Burma has long been a terrible example of how violation of human rights contributes to worsening public health (warning, large pdf file). The country is suffering under one of the highest rates of tuberculosis in the world, extensive malaria and HIV/AIDS, along with rising drug-resistance due to counterfeit drugs. Here’s hoping the Saffron Revolution succeeds for the health and political freedom of the Burmese.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007 at 3:32 pm and is filed under Blogroll, Harley Feldbaum, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.