Burma continues to be peripheral to Westerners’ vision

It’s a list of gruesome horrors that I am ashamed to think still happens in a world of advanced technology, wealth and comfort.

Girl you gotta carry that weight

After international outcry and consistent pressure from the International Labour Organisation over three years of negotiation, the Burmese junta signed the ILO Convention on Forced Labour. The international community, satisfied by this token of obedience, then went about its business.

But a report in CSR Asia (PDF 789KB) indicates that the Karen in particular are still subject to forced labour.

The Karen Human Rights Group, and co authors of the Shattering Silences, have advised that they continue to hear complaints, particularly about a road building project in Pupun. The Junta has denied that slavery still occurs, saying that no one has reported incidents. But this is of no consequence, as to report would be akin to telling Stalin that you didn’t like his dress sense or the company he kept.

This is a case when no news is not good news at all.

In Australia the majority of peace activism has been conflated with and focused on, anti nuclear issues, which neatly sidesteps the reality of war and death in most of the poor nations of the world; places like Burma.

Their focus is a statement of Western fears, not an acceptance of the daily reality of our Asian neighbours, who do not have memories for events long ago in another land. Every day, they simply flee death, cloaked in shells, bullets, bayonets, mines, knives, disease and starvation.

What are the alternatives? The long necked Padaung women fleeing their home Karenni state, are on view in the Chiang Mai zoo, like captive animals. One can pay to photograph them in one of the worst examples of human commodification arising from civil conflict.

The Indo Burmese Rohingya’s who fled to Australia are another group facing the Asian equivalent of ethnic cleansing. Denied citizenship and even the right to marry in Burma, they are Muslim people from the border areas with Bangladesh. Being a Muslim ethnic group they have found no compassion in Australia, instead being bartered like slaves in one of the most cynical deals that I have ever had the bad fortune to witness.

Worse, their identity as Rohingya’s is lost in the media in hype that suggests that they are yet another lot of dark skinned “illegals”, their faces lost in blurred images so they become photographic smudges, their humanity stolen, their fears forbidden.

Burmese ethic minorities continue to flood across the Thai border, many of them men. Some are trafficked into labour rackets and end up on construction sites, orchards, fishing and seafood processing. Recently 39 died on a Thai fishing boat in Indonesian waters.

Investigations found they had not been paid for three years. They simply starved to death, their bodies dumped overboard like rancid water. Anti trafficking regulations do not cover men so the survivors are facing deportation. Some, most notably the handsome Shan men, find work as sex workers, the profits being sent across the border to support families.

Peace activists and others often feel queasy about supporting an armed struggle, particularly in Burma where women bear arms as a matter of necessity, and in continuity of historical lineage.

Those sitting sipping coffee in Western cities talking theoretically about peace and war, have little concept of what it is like to simply get up and face hell each day. But it’s even more disconcerting to know that really no one gives a toss. The war in Burma rates lower in movie star attraction than Tibet. There are no Branjelina’s flying into Rangoon, no Richard Geres kissing Than Shwe. George Soros is a singular example, funding pro Burmese activities, the flagship of which is Irrawaddy magazine.

It seems that Asia is a good place to visit, but not a good place to really care about.