Preparing For The Worst : To Understand How Bad It Is

7 February 2008
By Goldie Shwe

Burma's opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has sent a message, "Prepare for the worst!", after her meeting with senior members of the National League for Democracy Party on 30 January.

First, the people of Burma need to understand how terrible their common enemy really is. How the Army has become over many decades, a putrifying cancer, draining the life out of the nation it was set up to defend, by intimidation, endemic corruption, and a determination to exclude the people of Burma from any role in governing their country.

Military power has become an addictive drug, the use of which allows them to drain the nation and its people of their resources, and to bank the proceeds. One half of the nations’ income is spent on the military junta; the people of Burma are increasingly seen by the junta as a slave nation, born to work for them. If you understand this, you are already able to understand how difficult making any change is going to be. Our weakest point in the past was not being able to see how bad the enemy was.

We didn't see junta as so bad because they were Burmese. Under the British and Japanese, it was much easier as they were foreigners who looked much different from us. We did not want them to rule our country because we could not believe that they would have our best interests at heart.

Against this background, we were unwilling to believe that the Burmese military, drawn from our very own people, could be that bad, just as a child cannot believe its own parents could hurt him, let alone intimidate, violate and even kill him. We always had naïve belief and hoped that the junta could change and be good and kind to us, because they are just like us - Burmese and Buddhists - after all. How can they possibly be so evil?

The sad truth which has taken too long to believe is that the junta is a group of the most ruthless terrorists, who breed and train thugs to rule the country and they will do anything to protect their ruling power, including killing of the monks.

If you still believe, after the September 2007, that the junta's killing, torturing, bullying and raping of the people of Burma and robbing of the natural resources of the country is still nothing to do with you, then the country will be under the heel of the military junta for another 100 years, with your complicity.

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