Monk led protests in Myanmar

This was the big news of the week. Potent ingredients: A group of young monks, well organised, the leaders hidden, communication channels in place, a population inflamed from a botched fuel price increase. One wonders how long the young monks have been preparing, waiting for the right moment (perhaps from as long ago as 1988). Was it their intention to draw the Military Government into committing acts of violence against their peaceful but very visible protesting monks, in order to trigger a turning point in the will of the Burmese people to rise up and in process trigger off the fracturing of stress lines that already exist in the military leadership? Was this bait to draw out the uncapturable beast into the open? The chess piece placed innocently in harms way, apparently unprotected?

News reports keep making reference to the large numbers killed (the Straits Times puts it at 3000) in the last major uprising in 1988, (by which time I had already been at my first job for 3 years, and 1 year prior to my joining hp). It's interesting that Wikipedia notes that the trigger for the student demonstrations was another military junta economic policy - the raising of the price of rice, and the withdrawing of Burmese local currency notes.

What is different now, in a very significant way, is the ability of the young Burmese to capture movies and audio of the action in the streets on their mobile phones. Then, in nearby internet cafes, they would send the recorded snippets of history on to Burmese living overseas (see AFP story), who would in turn post them on blogs and send them to news sites. The risks for this new generation of internet empowered citizen journalists are high. Today's newspapers are reporting that the Generals have cut off Internet access to prevent more leakage of content they don't want the world to see.

The internet is clearly making it harder for oppressive regimes to do their dirty work and keep it hidden from the outside world. Just as the internet is bringing information to those being oppressed - information that changes minds and attitudes, and brings about new thinking that brings about new societies and hopefully gender equality, racial equality and the ever growing income gap.

It's interesting to see ASEAN's response as well. This is not the ASEAN of earlier days. This ASEAN is more aware of the eyes of the world, the importance of it's credibility and one willing to raise it's voice to those in it's own fold. I was happy to see PM Lee and Foreign Minister Yeo calling for restraint, and a move to dialog to resolve the ugly buildup of tension. The phrasing of the messages seemed to suggest pain on the part of the messenger, which added to the heartfelt tone of "I really don't want to say this to you in public, but the repercussions are so serious that it just has to be done".

While reading up about the events in Yangon, I came across this website:
http://www.altsean.org/
On it's front page, there's an interesting poll that suggests that 33% of visitors to this site believe that the confrontation will end with an internal coup within the military junta.
Another interesting piece (I forget the source) talks about how China has all but economically colonized Burma, and compares the Burmese situation with that of Tibet.
The site, Burmanet.org, collects coverage of Burma by the international media.

I remember reading a newspaper article a long time ago, about Dr Goh Keng Swee, which mentioned that the early Singapore government saw Burma as an advanced nation with the brightest prospects of all of South East Asia.

In today's Straits Times, there's an article by David Steinberg, a Georgetown University professor who is currently visiting with the ISS. A quote from his article:

The tragedy of the state, once considered a half-century ago to be potentially the most developed and progressive in the region, is apparent.
It should have been the beacon for development in South-east Asia because of it's natural resources, under-population and higher education standards, together with a functioning, if somewhat creaky, parliamentary system.

Indeed, with the end of the Japanese Occupation, as the colonial masters whimpered their way back to their former colonies, Burma and it's potential leadership under Aung San seemed ready to leap rapidly into the club of independent nations. Backed by it's economic links with Britain and it's rich natural resources, Burma could not help but become wealthy.

How differently things have turned out.