Madam, - Is there anything to be done about Burma? "We can't get aid in there unless we're invited," says George Bush, a courtesy he did not offer Saddam Hussein. Callously ignoring the plight of millions of its starving citizens in the Irrawaddy delta, the military junta was much more interested in coercing the populace to vote for its new constitution - in which, tucked away, is a paragraph stating that anyone married to, or formerly married to, a foreigner is disqualified from taking part in politics, thus finally eliminating the threat of Aung San Suu Kyi.
The democratically elected leader of the country, she has just completed her 17th year of incarceration. On her release she was immediately re-arrested.
Slaughtering students in 1988, more recently torturing and killing peacefully protesting monks and now refusing foreign aid (or allowing it too late) to the victims of the hurricane, this cruel military dictatorship is immune to international pressure.
Burma Action Ireland, like similar bodies across the globe, conducts its protest marches and helps refugee dissidents, but might soon be obliged to change its name to Burma Inaction.
Something must be done, so here is a modest proposal. Burma is made up of several ethnic states. the people of one of them, the Karens, have valiantly resisted the massive Burmese army for half a century. Each year they are attacked; villages are burnt, women raped, men enslaved.
The courageous Karens are impoverished and ill-equipped. We should support them with money and sophisticated weapons. If they can repel and defeat the army of the junta, it might inculcate in the Burmese mind the notion that perhaps the generals are not invincible. - Yours, etc,
JOHN BOORMAN,
Annamoe,
Co Wicklow.