Burma

For 34 years the people of Burma have been ruled by a military junta as tyrannical and secretive as any in the modern era. Now, desperate for hard currency, the country’s dictators are at pains to establish Burma as a holiday destination.

Arriving in Burma, the facades are almost normal: traffic in the streets of Rangoon, crowds in the markets and tea stalls, astrologers announcing the future at the great Shwedagon pagoda; families playfully dousing small ivory Buddhas in water.

With an eye to its vast Asian market, Europe promotes human rights when the price is right. In Burma, crimes against humanity are allowed to continue without challenge.

A military junta and multinational corporations on one side, and Buddhist democratic forces led by Aung San Suu Kyi on the other, are engaged in battle for Burma.

Writing for the Guardian, John Pilger marks the Burmese junta’s renewal of the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi with an examination of the intimidations of the ‘war on terror’ on those who help to free her and her people.

Addressing a London meeting, ‘Freedom Writ Large’, organised by PEN and the Writers Network of Burma, John Pilger pays tribute to Aung San Suu Kyi and the writers of Burma, ‘the bravest of the brave’, and describes the hypocrisy of Western leaders who claim to back their struggle for freedom.

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger recalls his last conversation with Aung San Suu Kyi, under premanent house arrest in Rangoon. Filmed secretly by Pilger and David Munro, the legitimate leader of the Burmese people provides a glimpse of her aloneness and courage.