Veteran Journalist Calls for People Power to Oust Regime

By VIOLET CHO

March 12, 2008 - Less than a week after an unsuccessful visit to Burma by UN Special Envoy Ibrahim Gambari, one of the country’s most respected journalists has made an extraordinary appeal for a “people power” uprising to end the ruling regime’s stranglehold on power.

In a recorded message addressed to Burmese both inside and outside the country, Ludu Sein Win, a prominent journalist and former political prisoner, said that he believed that force was the only way to end more than four decades of military rule.

“In the entire history of the world, there has never been a dictator who willingly gave up power once he had it firmly in his hands,” he said in his message, recorded in the former capital, Rangoon.

“And there are no countries in the world which have gained liberation though the help of the United Nations,” he added, in apparent reference to the failed efforts of the UN special envoy, who left the country on Monday after being chastised by the ruling generals for “bias” in favor of the democratic opposition.

Describing the deepening political, social and economic crisis facing the country, the sixty-eight-year-old veteran journalist warned the Burmese people that it was futile to pin their hopes for a better future on the diplomatic efforts of the international community.

“Don’t waste your time dreaming about dialogue and considering help from the UN Security Council,” he said. “We already have the power to force out the military dictatorship. That power is the force and strength of every Burmese citizen.”

In the wake of last September’s monk-led protests, which attracted worldwide attention, the time is right to launch a renewed effort to overthrow military rule, the veteran journalist insisted.

Ludu Sein Win has experienced more than his fair share of trouble at the hands of the country’s ruling dictators.

He began his distinguished career as a young reporter for the Mandalay-based left-wing newspaper, Ludu (“The People”), launched in 1946. As the publication’s Rangoon bureau chief, he was arrested at the age of 27 and sentenced without trial to 13 years in prison, during which he was tortured by the authorities. He then spent an additional two years confined on Coco Island, a penal colony located about 430 km southwest of Rangoon in the Indian Ocean.

He is one of Burma’s most outspoken advocates of independent media, and is the author of many books on the basic theory and ethics of journalism. He is also popular as a prolific writer of books on issues relating to young people.

Source: The Irrawaddy News - www.irrawaddy.org