US policy on Burma in the Katrina context Love is a Many Splendour Thing

US policy on Burma in the Katrina context Love is a Many Splendour Thing: "Hurricane Katrina has painted the real picture of the mass suffering of people and for the first time the Americans have witnessed it, while in Burma, the people have been used to this scene as it was repeatedly played again and again for one and half decades of Burmese Military Rule. The only difference is that there is no television camera to beam it to the world for this man made Katrina. The pangs of Katrina if compared to the agony of the Burmese people is equal, for over 3 million people fled the country with one million refugees in Thailand alone (subjected to persecution) and hundreds of thousands of ethnic people are in forced labor as the latest report of the Amnesty International indicates.

President Bush authorized the dispatch 40,000 troops and we witnessed the soldiers helping the people everywhere in the disaster hit area. However, in Burma whenever the people see the soldier approaching their way, they just sprint off knowing that trouble is ahead for they will either loot, rape or forcibly recruited them to be used as porters, as the latest reports of Amnesty International indicates. Here, in America we behold the soldiers giving medical aid to the people but in Burma it is just the opposite and in one occasion in 1988 the soldiers went into the Rangoon General Hospital, shot up the nurses and doctors, a scene, which no Burmese could ever forget. Such is the general character of the Burmese soldiers if compared to an American GIs. "