COMMENTARY: More Words, or Positive Action?
Everyone is running out of words to express their feelings about the Burmese generals. What the generals are doing is making the world furious. It’s time to call their actions a humanitarian crime.
It’s impossible to find logical reasons for the junta’s rejection of adequate help from the UN, the US, the EU and the world’s relief agencies. Clearly, it’s hubris, xenophobia, fear and a callous disregard for the lives of the Burmese people.
“It’s a crime against humanity,” Pierre Fouilland of the Comité de Secours Internationaux, a French disaster rescue agency, told Reuters after he was denied a visa by the Burmese embassy in Bangkok. “It should be against the law. It’s like they are taking a gun and shooting their own people.” Kyaw Zwa Moe (VS ‘06), comments in the Thailand-based English language news magazine The Irrawaddy.
