The monks of Burma are hungry. Depending for their daily food mainly on offerings, these Buddhist monks, who devote their lives to meditation, have felt in their own flesh the effect of the marked deterioration in living conditions suffered by ordinary Burmese citizens. Braving the monsoon and defying the military, they have for several days been leaving their retreats to pour into the streets of Rangoon and Myanmar’s other major cities.
Yesterday, 30,000 of them headed a march that brought together up to 100,000 people protesting against the high cost of living. The Burmese demonstrators are covered by all the Western media; they are on the front pages of the newspapers. Western chancelleries are in a flurry. Politicians are jostling to show their compassion and proclaim their support for the “saffron” revolt. Maxime Bernier, Canada’s foreign minister, calls on Burma to engage in dialogue with the democratic opposition; George W. Bush announces new US sanctions against the Burmese military junta from the rostrum of the UN; Gordon Brown calls on the EU to toughen its stance against the Burmese regime; Nicolas Sarkozy promises to receive a delegation of the Burmese opposition at the Élysée as soon as he returns from New York.
One can only rejoice at this surge of humanity, at this awareness of the misery of the Other. If only this compassion extended a little further, to cover other wretched peoples of the planet, peoples just as oppressed as the people of Myanmar!
For example, the more than one million starving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, subjected to an illegitimate and inhumane embargo. An embargo wanted not only by the Israelis, but also by many Western capitals, and even by the government of Mahmoud Abbas, which, through its ambassador to the UN, asked a few weeks ago for the embargo to be maintained.
For example, the more than 30 million Algerians, half of whom live below the poverty line. A people reduced to destitution by a repressive and corrupt military regime that is unable, in 2007 and with reserves exceeding 100 billion dollars, to guarantee the population’s supply of milk, that imports… potatoes from Canada, and that drives young Algerians in despair – boys and girls – onto the deadly path of the harga (crossing the Mediterranean in makeshift boats). This regime has ruled Algeria for 45 years, exactly as in Myanmar, governed by a junta since 1962. But that is not the only similarity between the two countries. The Algerian people, like the Burmese people, rose up in 1988 to free themselves and were savagely repressed by the armoured vehicles of the national army, which left hundreds of victims. In the early 1990s it also tried, again like Myanmar, the experience of the ballot box, but the will of the junta brought it to a brutal end by cancelling the only free and transparent elections the country has ever known. The toll of repression in Algeria is, however, out of all proportion to that of the Burmese junta – but then the victims are not quite the same… Finally, Algeria and Burma share hydrocarbon wealth, much coveted, moreover, by the powerful oil and gas multinationals.
So when shall we see the Western chancelleries, which regard the illegitimate regimes of Algiers and Ramallah as “friendly governments”, treat the peoples of Gaza and Algeria with the same compassion as that of Burma?
And when shall we at last hear a clear and strong message that – contrary to the perception that is spreading and growing ever stronger among Muslim populations – in the eyes of the West, being Muslim does not necessarily exclude one from the realm of universal compassion?
Abbas Aroua, 26 September 2007
