The Beginning Of The End In Myanmar

In 1986, The Philippine EDSA Revolution had achieved its most immediate aims with only one casualty involved and was called bloodless that way. It was referred to by many as a modern-day miracle because of such circumstance. But in Myanmar, 9 people have already been killed by strafing soldiers, including a 50 year old Japanese reporter that took a bullet in the chest, and was caught by a panning camera lying on the grown, his face towards the sky, and probably seeing how death could become in order that others may be free.

Bloody and ruthless. That’s how this purge by the military in Myanmar should be described in the most apt manner. And I felt that it was also so cowardly where the insecurity of the military regime there had become finally patent that it had resorted to such form of beastly conduct. It is becoming more and more clear now how the military junta there is merely a semblance of a legitimate government, a pretender for authority, for it doesn’t even have a code of conduct in resolving this kind of urgency, resorting immediately to ultimate violence (shooting into the crowd indiscriminately), not exerting best effort to moderate the situation by utilizing less deadlier means, like the use of water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets.

It was nowhere shown that the shooting of protesters by soldiers stationed to guard premises there had resulted from heat of the moment situation, erupting untowardly, like when the situation had reached a certain level of raucousness that force had to be used. The soldiers just shot at the protesting crowd, without any immediate harm to be thwarted. It should have been primordial that before violence would be exerted by the authorities, it should have been determined to be ultimately necessary, in the presence of clear and imminent danger and with the purpose of thwarting of a harm imagined to be greater than the violence exerted. This crudeness in the use of force merely offers evidence that in Myanmar, the rule of law is not such a very clear idea. And this must be why the Jakarta Post had termed the purge there as “Murder In Myanmar”.

ASEAN should go the extra mile and suspend Myanmar’s recognition into the regional group for such rogue conduct of the military junta there must have no place in a group like ASEAN, one that was formed in order to promote sympathy among nations involved, as well as to its populace as a whole.

In fact, every nation in the world should take away recognition of the military junta there as the legitimate government of Myanmar. The people yearn loudly for freedom and to be wise, the generals should take heed of this in the most efficient manner. When the populace there chooses to chart another direction, away from the wave of hatred and repression that the military had been sowing there through the years, then the generals there becomes merely a bunch of bullies intending to rule the people solely through the use of force, and not one legitimate government for and in behalf of the people.

Let us see how much of the populace really clamor for a different direction in Myanmar. If every soul there sees with repulsion the military junta that governs them by iron hands, then this mass uprising, sometimes called by others as “The Saffron Revolution” should become the beginning of the end for the ruthless military regime there.