"Good afternoon. Thank you for being here. I’d like to speak to you today about the terrible situation that has developed in Burma. Now if you’re wondering why I call it Burma, instead of Myanmar, it’s because Myanmar was a name given to the country of Burma by a brutal and sadistic regime, that has for decades tried to squash the will of its people through mass relocation, torture, rape and murder, among other inexpressible human rights abuses. So forgive me, but Burma just feels better.
In the last few weeks the world has finally begun to witness the cruelty of general Than Shwe’s military junta. We have seen him turn his firepower on his own people, and his snipers targeting civilians, not with rubber bullets meant to subdue, but with real ammunition and lethal intent. Not even the monks have been exempt from their callous disregard. Those gentle souls, who wouldn’t kill a mosquito if it bit them, have been shot, beaten, imprisoned, driven from their monasteries, and forced to escape into the jungle, or across the border, into Thailand.
I would like to thank First Lady Laura Bush and the President for recognizing and beginning to take action on this issue. I’m glad that there’s something we can agree on, and I hope that Mr. Bush will try to handle this problem with intelligence and sincerity. I do not believe that our military intervention should ever be an option here. I believe the answer is to bring China, India and Russia into alignment with the rest of the world on this issue. Without their influence, the brutality and oppression will go on in Burma indefinitely. And so I would like to appeal to leaders and the good people of those nations to search inside themselves and find compassion for those who are suffering so greatly.
China, in the last decade you have opened your country to new world markets and the possibility of a more amiable relationship with the west. for you, who have been a mystery to us in the west for so long, This is an opportunity to show the world that human rights are one of your priorities, and as the summer games in 08’ approach, that you truly do have an Olympic spirit.
Russia, I have been to Moscow and St. Petersburg. And I have met many beautiful people there. People of strength and character. I have seen first hand that cold weather does not mean coldhearted. And what better chance than this to show it.
And India, your statement encouraging the release Aun San Suu Kyi and the democratic process was welcome, but was not enough. You yourselves were set free by the nonviolent protest of Mahatma Ghandi. I hope you have not drifted so far from his influence that the suffering of women and children are less important to you than the natural gas reserves that lay beneath their feet. What would Ghandi Gi say of your new progress, if it has led you to turn a blind eye to human anguish?
It seems to me that an awful lot of problems these days stem from the fact that nations act more like corporations than companions. We must
start putting human lives above the bottom line, and yes,
sometimes take the loss. We cannot afford to lock our doors and windows and ignore the desperate pleas of our neighbors because the bully who abuses them has something we want. There is no resource more profitable than compassion. We have the power to bring the bully to reason, without violence, and if we don’t use that power to condemn his outrageous behavior, we are in fact sanctioning it. Sanctioning mass relocation, sanctioning forced labor, sanctioning rape, sanctioning murder, sanctioning the recruiting of child soldiers, and encouraing the heroine trade.
Specifically we are asking for a global arms embargo through the United Nations Security Counsel for all 15 member of the Counsel: China, Russia, and India included to pass a binding resolution banding military shipments to Burma. This is a government that uses its weapons, not in self-defense, but against its own citizens and the time has come for the United Nations Security Counsel to start acting
less like a group of corporationsand more like
United Nations. Show the more than 200,000 people who are living in refugee camps at the borders of Thailand, Bangladesh, Malaysia and India that we believe their lives have value and that they haven't been forgotten.
In closing, I would like to appeal to general Than Shwe and the soldiers themselves. Please, come to your senses. Stop hurting your people. Treat the monks with the reverence they deserve. Begin peaceful negotiations, and return your nation's true leader, Aung San Suu Kyi to her home and her family. There is nothing to defend if you have lost the faith of your people. It is already over. But if you continue on this path, yours will be a legacy of great shame, and history will remember you as yet another example of man’s soul being overwhelmed by ego.
I truly believe that all of us are good, that all of us are one. It is only ego that takes our attention away from the heaven that is right in our midst, by convincing us that we are separate. And all of us, even those who are committing these crimes, deserve better."
Labels: Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma, Jim Carrey
