Monday, October 1st, 2007
WIKI-ING THE BURMESE JUNTA INTO THE DOCK?
The Burmese government is now engaged in wholesale massacres of it’s Buddhist opposition:
“Burma: Thousands dead in massacre of the monks dumped in the jungle” –The Daily Mail
” Thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle, a former intelligence officer for Burma’s ruling junta has revealed. The most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win, said: “Many more people have been killed in recent days than you’ve heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand.” Mr Win, who spoke out as a Swedish diplomat predicted that the revolt has failed, said he fled when he was ordered to take part in a massacre of holy men. He has now reached the border with Thailand. “
eddie of Hidden Unities sent me the following article from TIME:
“But while the junta can control the street, the monasteries and even the web, they can’t control the sky. On Friday the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), working with Burmese groups, released a new analysis of high-resolution satellite images that pinpointed evidence of human rights violations in the eastern Burma. For the first time in Burma, scientists were able to use orbital satellites to confirm on-the-ground reports of burned villages and forced relocations of civilians by the military. The technique has already been used to document human rights abuses in Zimbabwe and Darfur, but in Burma, a closed country that often seems like a modern-day version of Orwell’s 1984, it’s almost like turning Big Brother against itself. “We are sending a message to the military junta that we are watching from the sky,” said Aung Din, policy director for the U.S. Campaign for Burma. “
What if NGO’s, IGO’s and national governments geographically divided Burma into “observation zones” and used government and commercial spy satellites to accumulate evidence of crimes against humanity by the military regime, making these images available on a public wiki ? An open-source pressure campaign for the prosecution of Burmese leaders before a special tribunal or the ICC ?
UPDATE:
Free Burma! is a central site for “International Bloggers Day for Burma -October 4 “
BURMA LINKS:
The Glittering Eye New!
Swedish Meatballs Confidential New!
Hidden Unities as well as here
