A great injustice has been taking place in the last 45 years, and it’s time for a new generation to learn about what’s going on. An entire country has been ruled by a violent military in Southeast Asia and no one seems to be fighting against it with anything except words.
A recent uprising began when the people of Myanmar were outraged with gas prices being increased throughout the country. These disagreements concerning gas prices eventually escalated into protests against the government with Buddhist monks leading the way.
Once the protests escalated to a large enough point, the Myanmar military, known as a junta, began to put them down by firing into a crowd of people during the protests. The junta used machine guns and fired randomly into crowds, killing a number reported to be between 10 and 200 people. This number is far from definite because the number of deaths vary greatly from source to source: the government acknowledges about 10 deaths while other groups who spoke with witnesses claim that as many as 200 people died. In either case, an even greater number of people were injured.
After the shootings in Myanmar, the junta arrested thousands of people who were involved in the protests. Buddhist monks were locked up in monasteries so they couldn’t lead the people. After the protests, these same monasteries were found completely empty and it seems like all of the monks were arrested or otherwise imprisoned.
With all of this freedom being taken away from average citizens, it seems weird to think that we aren’t in there helping them with their democracy. Myanmar has expressed an interest in democracy for years, and they have even elected a president from their pro-democracy political party, who is now and has been under house arrest for more than a decade.
One of the big excuses for going into and staying in Iraq has been to help the government establish a democracy in a place that’s been torn apart by warlords and violence. If this was really a reason why we’re staying, then we should already be in Myanmar helping people deal with their horrible government.
It’s gotten to the point in which the junta has shut off the Internet in the country, so reports about the horrible things they’re doing can’t make it out of the country.
They’ve expressed their want and need for a democracy, so why aren’t we helping them out by fighting for them like we are for the people of Iraq?
If we are going to play the role of being the world’s police force, we have to do it right, which means we can’t ignore the worst parts of world just because they’re going to be more difficult for us.
People are dying, peaceful Buddhist monks are being killed, imprisoned and defrocked, forced to remove symbolic religious robes. How can we allow people to die who are only interested in peace?
The worst kind of person to kill in this world is a Buddhist monk. Even if you don’t agree with their views on the world, you have to agree that they are nothing but peaceful in everything they do in life. Even when they are publicly humiliated and killed for peacefully protesting, they remain the same.
We can see how horrible this government is by looking at what they can do to such a peaceful group. The protests that started this series of events was completely peaceful. We know that because of photo, video and eye-witness reports that came out of the country after it happened.
Even if we don’t go in and try to help the Myanmar people by using force, we can persuade China to use their influence by shutting down trade with Myanmar until the important issues in the country are resolved.
We already let China get away with what they did to the peaceful members of Tibet where they completely took over and destroyed the country. Even though they aren’t the first-hand culprits of these terrible crimes they do have a lot of influence in Myanmar and we can’t continue to allow atrocities like this to happen just because we are afraid of upsetting countries in Asia.
If China isn’t going to do anything to immediately put a stop to people dying and being arrested in Myanmar, than we should step in and do something.
We’re getting pretty good at rushing into countries and turning them upside-down, why don’t we do in a country where it is so painfully obvious they need help?
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