Burma: Tear Gas & Violence… Now What?

Aung Naing Oo , a former student leader in Burma who was involved in the 1988 uprising and who now lives in exile in the UK, believes the junta cannot stop the 2007 protesters. “Nobody knew what was happening in 1988,” he told the Today programme on BBC Radio Four.
“There was only very little information about the killings. Now with the internet and the whole world watching I think its a totally different story now and I think the other important difference is that in 1988 it was the students that were leading the demonstrations, but now it is the monks. Monks are highly revered in the country.”

Anger is growing among the protesters in Rangoon over the treatment of the monks, the BBC’s South East Asia correspondent, Jonathan Head, reports.

Here we go…..Only one dead so far.  How many by the end of the week? 

Is Aung Naing Oo correct in predicting a different outcome because of the widespread media coverage? 

How much chaos and bloodshed will China tolerate before fear over linkage to the junta’s behavior with Beijing’s close support and aid and the 2008 Beijing Olympics colors their reaction?

What concrete steps are available to activists within the USG and in civil society to effect real pressure on Beijing over this? Boycotts would seem out of the question, as would protests (they occur all the time over Tibet and religious freedom). 

A campaign in the media that plays off a theme similar to the modestly effective “Genocide Olympics” effort earlier this year? 

Hearings on Capitol Hill over the interesting tidbits Pepe Escobar takes note of with China’s military and economic ties with the junta?

Does private pressure work on Chinese leaders?  Are there interested parties making such calls with suggestions or warnings?

Where is Speaker Pelosi going to be on this?  She’s been a China hawk from the left for a long time, will a violent end to these protests provoke her fury? 

She’s been relatively calm on the China front, showing her occasional insensibilities with a disgraceful position on the Colombian free trade agreement (she cites union opposition to the deal, i.e. homegrown Colombian opposition, but this seems to be false, as most private sector Colombian unions support and greatly desire such an agreement). 

The increased use of satellite imagery would be helpful at this point in the cities and around the temples.  Publicizing that as well would be useful.  Remind the generals the world is watching. And pray like hell that somehow that could matter to them at this point, or at least to the Chinese.

Rather typical of Pres. Bush to offer a pathetic condemnation followed up by weak-kneed sanctions that have zero effect and merely offer an illusion of effort. 

More effective perhaps would have been a public request for China, India and others to confer with him at the UN over the issue, and hammer out a joint resolution which begins to lay the groundwork for what should be the inevitable ending; a UN or ASEAN intervention force on the ground to prepare the ground for a new government in Burma. 

That would too greatly threaten too many interests for too many parties at this point though, so it remains a daydream.

As would Speaker Pelosi threatening to make America’s participation in the Olympics an issue if China is seen as having blood on its hands.  (Obviously this is a stupid idea in practice, but as a threat and attention-generator for how serious this crisis is, quite effective).

Pepe Escobar’s take is illuminating. He talks of Chinese pipelines, joint-survelliance projects, Indian natural gas deals, vast drug-money laundering that effectively acts as Burma’s revenue, European energy interests, etc.  Translation: the Burmese people are going to be let down again, and the only question is how many will rot in prison and work camps and how many will die?

Great closer though:
So this seems to be the trillion-yuan question: Will Chinese President Hu Jintao sanction a Tiananmen remix – with Buddhist subtitles – less than one year before the Olympics that will signal to the whole world the renewed power and glory of the Middle Kingdom? If only the Buddha would contemplate direct intervention.