Burma Update: “We may fail, but we will win.”

 

Yesterday, Oct 3rd:
*UN worker and her family were abducted

*One blogpost for Burma: Idea that all bloggers were to abstain from writing and post the simple graphic below. I’m not sure how well it worked, but creative!

*Matt and I attended the US Senate Hearing on the Saffron Revolution: The room was packed out. Supporters wearing shirts with the graphic above filled the front rows along with several monks and prominent leaders of the US Campaign for Burma. The discussion focused on economic sanctions especially from China, Thailand, and India. A witness from Human Rights Watch, Mr. Tom Malinowski, outlined targeted banking sanctions as a strategy for denying the military junta access to the wealth they currently have.

The Mme Chair of the committee, Senator Boxer, was awesome at exposing some of the inadequacies of the actions taken by the executive branch which were outlined by a witness from the State Department. Two of her feisty-er highlights were: those economic sanctions have “a loophole the size of a mack truck” and we’re interested in “giving you the back bone” to act further.

Senator Kerry was also present and certainly went on the record as grilling the State Department witness–but I’m not sure he was effective at doing much more than letting us all know he wanted to see some progress on Burma. Thanks for your 6 minutes Kerry, now back to some constructive sass from Boxer!

Today, Oct 4th: The junta has totally shut down the Internet in Burma and suddenly the voices of the monks are silenced.

Tomorrow, Friday, October 5th is National Campus Day for Action in Burma. Check out www.studentsforburma.org

Saturday, Oct 6th: Global Day for Burma: Marches across the US

Washington DC: There will be a large march happening this Saturday starting at 12 noon. We will begin our march at the Burmese embassy (2300 S St NW) and from there march to the Chinese embassy, and then onto the Indian embassy, where, standing in front of the Gandhi statue, we will point out the hypocrisy of the Indian government.

Finally, the quote above was issued by witness Aung Din at the hearing yesterday. Aung Din survived torture and served over 4 years as a political prisoner in Burma. Senator Boxer vowed to fight even if we don’t have the votes in both the Senate and the UN after listening to Aung Din’s statement.