Look East and this is what you see!

Call it the stylized antics of a new-age Nero or the worst form of autocratic repression, the recent steps taken in the wake of Cyclone Nargis by the military junta (claiming to be an elected government) of Burma are nothing short of calculated genocide. As more and more news trickle out of the country, one is horrified to learn the extent to which a state machinery can go, to prove itself invincible (?).

First there was just Aung San Suu Kyi—the leader elected by the majority to govern the country and hence held under house arrest by the junta—to prove how repressive this regime can be. Then came the sudden (and massive) protests by monks and the ensuing bloodbath to muffle whatever voice of dissent was left. Finally, when all seemed quiet on the eastern front and dust was gradually beginning to settle down, cyclone Nargis struck the small nation in all its sound and fury.

Within days, as rotten bodies piled up and chances of an epidemic looming large grew, the military government once again proved that it is what exactly the world thinks it to be: a heartless system run by a bevy of barbaric men. The government left no stone unturned to prove itself worthy of the cause: aid workers were denied access, international aid was confiscated, cds were distributed instead of food and clothing, hordes of inmates in the country’s most-dreaded prison were secretly shot.

While all this mayhem was playing havoc in the lives of innocent people, the government came out in all its fanfare, announcing that it has conducted an “election” and has even succeeded in winning it. Such is the atrocity of the act that any comment in the face of it will only belittle the effort of nameless heroes, fighting a lost (?) battle for a decent life in this once-bejewelled land.