Pakistan and Myanmar

In its crisis, the military regime in Myanmar appears to have no popular support. Nevertheless, there are warning signs in the corporate media’s handling of the reporting about Myanmar—a country the former colonial power, Britain, still calls Burma—that should put any progressive and anti-imperialist person on guard.

It is enlightening to compare the media treatment of the generals running Myanmar with that of the generals running Pakistan, a U.S. client state. Both these regimes have taken bloody action against opposition religious figures, but without the same response in the Western corporate media.

Pakistan’s shaky president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, like the military grouping in Myanmar, faces both lay and religious opponents. Like them, he ordered troops to fire on religious figures in rebellion. On July 10, he launched a bloody military attack on a mosque in the center of the city of Islamabad. There is no doubt that Musharraf is a dictator ready to use naked force if he thinks it will keep him in power.

The reaction of the corporate media to Musharraf was, if not sympathetic, at least understanding. Here is a recent Reuter report in a chronology: “After a week-long siege, Musharraf orders troops to storm the Red Mosque in Islamabad to crush a Taliban-style movement. At least 105 people are killed.” This was typical, to characterize the victims as similar to the Taliban—in other words, as Islamic fundamentalist extremists, and thus unworthy of sympathy. No photos or film appeared in the media of the tanks and soldiers shooting people down.

Newsday takes a different bent on Myanmar: “But the military junta in Myanmar, also known as Burma, seems to know only one way to resolve this crisis: brutal, bloody force.”

This approach was typical of the corporate media throughout North America, Western Europe and Australia. Scenes of Buddhist monks being fired on dominated the coverage. The media hurl the heaviest invective at the Myanmar generals and anyone who might support them. They treat the civilian opposition, especially those forces with close connections and support from the imperialist countries, as popular heroes, as they do Buddhist monks.

Our message is: Watch out. Such coverage is aimed at justifying imperialist intervention. In Pakistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, that could mean military intervention if the mass struggle there threatens to remove the generals now under U.S. control.

U.S. or British imperialism, or for that matter any of the NATO allies or Australia or Japan, never intervene with money and/or arms in order to aid a struggle for freedom or independence. If these imperialist forces are involved, you can be sure there are resources at stake or geostrategic interests in play.

As for Myanmar, however the struggle of the people of that Southeast Asian country plays out, U.S. and NATO imperialists have no right to intervene.