A Look Inside Burma

Written by: DFA Staff on Aug 19, 2008 10:24 PM EDT

Writing in the New Yorker, George Packer gives a bleak and thorough account of life in Burma:

Over the decades, the Burmese government has subjected its citizens to epic misrule, systematically destroying every institution of society except the Army, whose leaders have made staying in power their overriding goal. The streets of Rangoon and Mandalay are monitored by the secret police and by a group of armed thugs known as Swan Arr Shin—the Masters of Force. Dissidents are routinely tortured. The generals’ irrational economic policies have reduced one of Asia’s richest countries, once the world’s leading exporter of rice, to penury. Burma’s gross domestic product per capita is now less than half that of its neighbor Cambodia. Economic sanctions—a form of protest against the government’s human-rights abuses—have made the country even poorer.

Danny
Communications Director

Tags: