singapore and burma: friends to the end

Yesterday, 20 years ago, 23-year-old Phone Maw, a Burmese student at the Rangoon Institute of Technology was gunned down by security forces. That resulted in the birth of the 1989 student uprising. Of course, that news never made headlines yesterday. Except maybe only on the commentary of The Irrawady – an independent news agency covering Burma and Southeast Asia. When Buddhist monks went to the streets to protest, the world suddenly took notice and then when the hype was over, eyes were trained to focus elsewhere. Burma was again forgotten.

In Burma, March 13 has been proclaimed by pro-democracy movements as Burmese Human Rights Day. The date was installed to honor the memory of RIT students who were gunned down by the military on March 13, 1988. In 1989, came the student uprising that saw too many dead civilians and many more fleeing the country in search of help and safety. Today, any talk of Phone Maw can result in sporadic arrests by security forces followed by imprisonment. The litany of human rights abuses committed by the Burmese junta under the rule of General Than Shwe has long been a fact known to the international community but too often ignored. In particular, I am ashamed that my government (the Singapore authorities) have done almost nothing to resolve the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the repressive state.

It is a well-known fact that Singapore has strong business interests in Burma and there is a lot to lose should the generals ever lose grip of power. Powerful technocrats in Singapore, specifically those who work for Temasek Holdings, know far too well, how much they have invested into Burma and that this VERY source of funding is what is keeping the Burmese junta alive. From weapons to telecommunications systems, Singapore has been the most prominent supporter propping the Burmese government. Singapore does not care about human rights abuses. After China, it has perfected the art of compulsory executions for drug traffickers. It has also helped to keep drug lords from Burma afloat.

The Singaporean authorities must have been on edge when the entire world was focused on the protests in Burma. They must have heaved a sigh of relief when it was over and quietly retreated back to resuming relations with their Burmese counterparts. Singapore has been contented to put up a diplomatic show but we all know it has been nothing more than the occasional hand-wringing. If I may put it bluntly, we are a bunch of self-interested bastards.

Let me tell you something. Singapore is a pretty, little island-state, with stretches of shopping malls, great food, and cheap electronics. But we are also a country of mandatory death sentence for drug traffickers, where you get fined for a lot of things, where freedom of expression is very much curtailed. So don’t be deluded by the pretty images you see. We are a rich country but very poor in morals.

www.khrg.org
This is a site by the Karen Human Rights Group documenting news and reports relating to their struggle and atrocities committed by the Burmese junta. The pictures in the photosets can get really gruesome but they are perhaps a reality we have far too often simply choose to ignore.