Editorial
Myanmar clampdown
The junta must involve in dialogue
It is regrettable the way the peaceful demonstrations of the monks, joined later on by the pro-democracy activists on the streets of Yangon, were attempted to be put down by the military junta. One is not sure about the actual number of dead but it is much more than what we have come to know from various accounts emanating from the country. Very little real time information is available since the military rulers have cracked down on the media and disrupted other means of communication with the outside world.
The UN Special envoy to Myanmar is in Myanmar for urgent talks with the country's military leaders. We are hopeful for a peaceful solution, and we would like to think that the country would be spared repetition of the painful consequences of the people's demand for establishment of democracy in 1988.
It is a pity that so far the repressive and isolationist military junta has refused to pay heed to international demands for allowing the establishment of democratic government in the country. And through very repressive measures it has prevented all forms of dissent and demands to come to the fore. One wonders whether international expression of revulsion or condemnation of the junta's oppressive actions will help change its attitude and bring the people of Myanmar the benefits of democracy. Neither have sanctions worked fully; if anything it is the people that suffer the consequences, more than those that sanctions are directed at.
Endowed with vast strategic resources, the military rulers have exploited its natural wealth for cultivating relationships with neighbours and some countries of the west. And being isolationist, the junta had thumbed its nose at international criticisms for the last nineteen years.
We believe that neither pressure nor sanctions, certainly not intervention, can bring about a permanent resolution of the problems in Myanmar. What the junta must be convinced about is the essentiality of involving in a dialogue with the political parties in order that a political solution can be brought about that would give expression to the aspirations of the people of Myanmar for a democratic dispensation, something that they have been deprived of since very long. And in this regard we feel that those countries that have close ties with it must bring to bear upon the military regime in Yangon the realisation that oppression and subjugation of people's rights might eventually conflagrate into uncontrollable inferno.
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