Cultured Views

The shame in Burma

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A Japanese photographer lies prone on the ground, his arms raised above his head in surrender, a camera in his right hand. Hovering over him is a soldier with a machine gun aimed at the man…seconds later the photographer is dead and the gunman moves away.

This is what is happening in Burma (Myanmar) right now. Bloodshed; troops firing on their own fellow countrymen, buddhist temples being ransacked and destroyed, buddhist monks being beaten and killed. It seems unbelievable that buddhism - that most universal advocate of peace - is at the centre of this violent human storm in Rangoon, Burma.

I always have the utmost admiration for people, living under oppressive and violent regimes, who have the courage to stand up against those regimes. Often at the cost of many of their own lives; remember the 1989 students uprising in Tiananmen Square China?. Again, many killed by their own people.

The Buddhist monks in Burma were bravely leading the people in a protest against the military regime there that is causing so much misery in that country. The citizens have had enough, they want freedom and peace. Two things that are so taken for granted in so many other places in the world. In countries like Australia, the UK and the US the people can protest peacefully; in places like Burma they get shot.

But that image of the dead Japanese photographer stands alone. An unarmed man seeking only to warn the outside world about what was going on at a moment in time, armed only with a camera, is killed. It represents the final stance that many ordinary citizens in Burma are now prepared to take.

For freedom and peace.

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