Australia, Burma/Myanmar, Featured Work, Politics, Travel - Monday, November 15, 2010 8:01 - 0 Comments

Balancing the Burma issue

Australian Financial Review, November  15 2010

There is a new flag hanging outside the government buildings in Nay Pyi Taw, Burma’s obscure and expensive new capital five hours north of Rangoon. It was hoisted just last month ahead of last Sunday’s landmark elections, the first in 20 years; its three stripes, the government says, represent solidarity, peace and courage.

New flag or not, the election was hardly a revolution for democracy. Observers were not allowed in, foreign journalists were banned, the main democratic party boycotted it and a quarter of the seats were reserved for the military before a single vote was cast. Burma (formally Myanmar) is among the most loathed of Asia’s governments, brutal and oppressive, with a long list of sins from the incarceration of elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi for most of the last 20 years to the indiscriminate killing of protesting monks in 2007.

And so the question remains a familiar one: what to do about it.

This is the article as originally filed before Aung San Suu Kyi’s release. To see it as it ran in the AFR, click here: burma wright final

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