Tuesday, January 22, 2008

BURMA: 'Downhill on all fronts'


Belgian clown Gauthier Jansen performs for Burmese children in Maesot, Thailand, on the border with Burma, on January 19, 2008. The children's parents provide for their families by collecting rubbish for recycling from a massive garbage dump nearby.
Photo: Aung Tin

Burma is going 'downhill on all fronts', according to a senior US diplomat who is on a visit to Vietnam.

A US deputy assistant secretary of state, Scot Marciel, says Burma is "absolutely refusing to take any positive steps at all, either in response to its own people or to the international community".

Speaking on the Hanoi stop of a regional tour, Mr Marciel, said the situation had gone beyond the issue of human rights.

He says the economy in Burma is 'going downhill', and 'the education system is getting ruined'.

Mr Marciel is urging the international community and regional neighbours to keep pressuring Burma's military junta.

Myat Soe
Malaysia, KL

1 comment:

Tettoe Aung said...

I was reading an article on Kenya in particular and Africa in general. It was said that in Nairobi the epicenter of violence was Africa's largest slum, Kibera, where a million people live in tin shacks and clapboard huts. The situation in Burma is heading towards that what they called 'explosive dispossessed' ready to erupt into violence.

The bloodletting could be against the Chinese community is and when the leaders in Burma haven't learnt the history.