The Burma Watch

Jeff Bercovici is on vacation. Guest blogger Sean Elder submits:

Let us now praise famous newspapers for putting the crisis in Myanmar, or Burma, on the front page, and the nightly newscasts for putting it at the top of their broadcasts.

Some like the Wall Street Journal went with the internet-is-a-powerful-tool angle.

Which was followed quickly by pieces like this one from Guardian on the junta's attempts to lock down internet access. (Americans may be more prone to believe in technology as savior, though in the case of paranoid military dictatorships, universal declaim may not be enough.)

Others, like the CBS Evening News, went with the democracy angle, with Barry Petersen proclaiming, "This lopsided battle has its echo in America's past. Over two centuries ago colonists did much the same thing, risking everything, including their lives, because they believed people have a right to be free."

A bit of a stretch perhaps, but I suppose they felt the need to make a connection with a country older Americans associate with Burma Shave and few of any age could find on a map even if Miss Teen South Carolina brought it to them.

The Buddhist monks who have led the demonstrations are our latest and most unlikely heroes ("The Saffron Army") but don't look for a leader to emerge from their ranks. As Kerry Brown of the UK's Chatham House noted in a Guardian backgrounder today, "The monks who have played such a significant and heroic role in the past few days, while socially respected, lack any plausible figurehead."

Buddhism is not really a religion (or philosophy if you prefer) of figureheads. The Buddha, after all, is within. Try getting that interview.

Many American practitioners of Buddhism know Burma (or Myanmar) as la ocus of Vippasana, or "mindfulness" practice. The Buddha changed the world by changing himself; there is no real equivalent in Buddhism's cosmology to Christ's sacrifice.

The enduring image of this conflict, the equivalent of the student in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square, may be that of Japanese photographer Kenji Nagai, who was filmed covering the conflict and being murdered by Myanmar soldiers.

^{Kenji Nagai tries to take photographs as he lies injured after police and military officials fired upon and then charged at protesters in Yangon's city center September 27. Kenji, 52, a Japanese photographer, was shot by soldiers as they fired to disperse the crowd. Kenji later died. Photograph by Reuters/STR/Landov}

I don't know what religion he was. But he was some kind of reporter.

by Sean Elder