Burma: a Nation at the Crossroads
by Benedict Rogers
Rider
In 2009, Swedish journalist Bertil Lintner noted that of the military regimes which had grabbed power around the world since 1962, only two remained: in Myanmar and Libya. Two years later, Libya's regime fell, and Myanmar's looked set for change.
'The reforms, however, are largely atmospheric rather than substantial,' writes human rights advocate Benedict Rogers in his impressively humane expose.
For more than five decades, Myanmar has been run by one of the world's cruellest regimes routinely accused of atrocities. Still, in the past two years, despite fake elections, the speed of change has been tremendous, Rogers writes. Hence hope, amid complexity.
Myanmar is one of Southeast Asia's most diverse countries - some seven ethnic minorities subsist on the margins of the Texas-size nation with a 50-million population. Long at loggerheads with the authorities, the minorities have been brutally mistreated by the ruling junta. The minorities' future will shape how the whole nation fares, according to the London-based Rogers, who has visited the country some 40 times.
Rogers explores whether Myanmar faces freedom and prosperity boosted by its immense mineral wealth or more subjugation. Like democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and most analysts, he has his doubts.
Judging by the picture Rogers paints, the picturesque, secretive country's worst demon is racism. One example: the Karen people were left to flounder after 2008's Cyclone Nargis struck, apparently because the regime wanted Nargis to do its dirty work.
Likewise, the stateless Muslim Rohingya face humiliation and harassment, including extortion, on a daily basis.