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Military Vs Military As Soldiers Refuse To Fire On Unarmed Civilians

Seconds after being shot at point blank range by Burmese military, a Japanese photographer appears to continue taking photos…

Moments later, he’s dead.

The marches for democracy in Burma-Myanmar continue today. Day 11.

The Burmese military are killing unarmed civilians and monks. Possibly hundreds are now rumoured to have been slaughtered. Thousands more jailed. The military junta claims it is regaining control of the streets and the protests are smaller.

Why won’t someone do something to stop this?

The outcry from Australia, the United States, the UK, the EU, is righteous but pathetically toothless. We can’t do anything, the leaders claim, except put pressure on China, Burma’s biggest trading partner.

Solidarity rallies across the planet grow in size and number.

A movement begins – boycott China’s 2008 Olympics.

The Japanese people, if not the government, are furious at the senseless murder of one of their own in the streets of Rangoon.

And now comes some extraordinary news – a growing number of Burmese military and police are refusing to shoot civilians, and may be now turning their weapons on the murderers in their midsts, or so some reports claim.

Will China’s refusal to use real pressure, and it’s enormous influence, on the Burmese military regime be the spark that leads to war between the East and West?

If the marches continue, and the slaughter of innocent people grows larger, who will send in forces to protect the civilians?

Will the mutiny within the military lead to events that eventually see the overthrow of the current junta?

Will Burmese soldiers go to war on their fellow soldiers in the streets?

Just how big will this horrorshow become?

Pepe Escobar writes in the Asia Times :

Myanmar is above all a key strategic pawn for China. Not only as a captive market for civilian goods in addition to weapons, but as a pawn to keep India in check and assure China of key strategic access to the Indian Ocean. Just like Britain – which twice invaded Burma, as Myanmar was known until 1989 – China’s utmost interest is natural resources. Oil and gas, of course, but also gems and timber: the once-pristine forests at the Myanmar-China border have been practically wiped out. According to the rights group Global Witness, Myanmar exported no less than $350 million in timber to China in 2005 alone, and the bulk of it was illegal.

According to EarthRights International, a crucial project of Chinese multinationals established in Myanmar has been the construction of a 2,380-kilometer oil-and-gas pipeline from the Arakan coast to Yunnan province in China. China needs this pipeline and a vital port in Myanmar for its growing energy imports from the Middle East, Africa and Venezuela.

Myanmar and China are also intimately linked by a $1.5 billion, high-tech electronic-warfare pet project of the junta’s leader, psychological-warfare specialist General Than Shwe, 74, very much appreciated in Beijing. It deals with surveillance of ethnic-minority guerrillas in Myanmar – the Karen, the Chan, the Wa, among others. It deals with surveillance of strategic competitor India. And it deals with surveillance of all naval traffic in the Indian Ocean, US warships included, not to mention the crucial Strait of Malacca.

US sanctions are just for internal American consumption; they will have absolutely no impact. For starters, Myanmar is not under a military embargo. A really different story, for instance, would be the Bush administration telling the Chinese to drop the junta, otherwise no US athletes will be seen at the Beijing Summer Olympics next year.

The French for their part now say they fear a terrible crackdown – but in fact they fear what happens to substantial oil business by French energy giant Total.

Oil and gas interests, as usual, fly in the face of genuine movements for democracy in totalitarian regimes.

You can have all the democracy you want, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of business.

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