Word: burma
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...leverage over Sudan and Burma is particularly limited. In 1997 Congress protested Khartoum's brutal tactics in southern Sudan by barring select Sudanese companies from involvement in the U.S. financial system. The same year, Congress punished the Burmese junta's "severe repression" by prohibiting U.S. investments in Burma. These measures have left the U.S. with few remaining business or diplomatic ties to terminate...
...will need to step in. But China, the international actor with the greatest leverage over both countries, seems disinclined to use it. Two-thirds of Sudan's oil goes to fuel China's booming economy, and China's foreign direct investment in Sudan exceeds $350 million annually. China is Burma's leading arms supplier and trading partner and has just won the right to build a major oil pipeline there. Beijing's support for abusive governments would be troubling under any circumstances, but its influence is magnified because it is using its veto on the U.N. Security Council to block...
...moon and his envoys can persuade repressive regimes to relent. U.N. officials must certainly use their pulpits to condemn abuses and mobilize international (not simply bilateral) punitive measures. But history has shown that envoys rarely succeed unless the Security Council is united behind them. Until Sudan and Burma begin to hear Chinese footsteps, they will have little incentive to engage in good-faith negotiations...
...Buddhist monks who first sang this mantra. For a week now, they have been marching through these streets, calling peacefully for change in a country that has been ruled for almost a half-century by a barbaric military junta. Burma's monkhood and military are roughly the same size--each has 300,000 to 400,000 men--but there the similarities end. With the monks preaching tolerance and peace and the military demanding obedience at gunpoint, these protests pit Burma's most beloved institution against its most reviled...
...young woman urges. The troops are a hundred yards away, and I think that's close enough. I'm mindful of reports that just last night the military raided more than a dozen monasteries, beating and arresting hundreds of monks. And I know that soldiers like these snuffed out Burma's last great pro-democracy uprising in 1988, killing and injuring thousands. I know they will not hesitate to shoot, whether or not there's a foreigner present. Sure enough, seconds later they open fire. From that moment on, the world's most unlikely uprising--with its vivid images...