Boycott the junta, Monk killers

Original post : Ko Htike's Blog
Translated by Nay Chi U

An Appeal By The Public Movement Organizing Committee
Reference : 2/2008 SCMM
Date : 18-02-2008

To The General Public

Under the military rulers we, the general public are getting poorer everyday and the poverty net that surrounds us is just bigger and wider. By contrast, a handful of the military generals, and their families and friends, are getting extremely wealthy, that they can hardly find enough banks to keep all the money they have extorted from the people of Burma.

While repeatedly shouting out loud that they are encouraging a market economy system, the military group are in practice using the Burmese economy as their own market and selling of the counties’ resources for their own benefit. As a result the public, from individual road sellers to small and medium business owners and all other employed workers have to struggle to survive while it is impossible to live and work in a straightforward way as they are forced to pay huge taxes, forced donations and contributions, fines and penalty payments.

Our country’s important businesses and all natural resources are under the control of the military group, where they can sign contracts, permit or license at will, allowing them to steal the nations wealth that is they almost choke on it. Meanwhile we, the public, have to work from dawn till dusk, simply to survive.

Our country’s health, education and social services are also some of the worst in the world. Virtually none of the money stolen from the public, and none of the vast income from the sale of our country’s natural resources are spent on public services. The money goes either to the small ruling junta, family and followers, or to buy more lethal weapons which they can use to intimidate, repress and kill its own monks and citizens. Any public services built with the minimal funds used are for cosmetic effect only, for duping the international media, but what benefit do we actually get? Aren’t we all paying ourselves for health, education, social and all other services? We are like captive zoo animals, used by the junta to gain international aid, through our poverty and suffering, from which the corrupt authorities cut all the flesh for their own consumption, and laugh in the face of the public as they throw them the bones.

Whenever the country’s suffering and poverty is referred to the junta always blame it on the international economic sanctions. The international community has repeatedly offered immediate help and support if they start to make changes in the political and economical situation of the country which the junta repeatedly refuses at the cost of continued public starvation.

Their one real policy is to maintain their control over everything in the country. In such a situation, every investment, all support and aid, pumps money into the junta’s own bank accounts, while the public remains poor.

Intimidation and bullying of vulnerable civilians has become a casual regular practice all the way down from the central to the lower level authorities, where we are being controlled by fear– ludicrously unreasonable laws, arbitrary orders and the grossly punitive prison sentences.

If we continue to put up with the abuse, bullying and repression, our off-springs will also become the slaves to the junta’s obnoxious offspring. We must work to improve our own children’s future. Our reply to the junta must be directed at replacing their violent and grossly evil selfishness with fairness and peace. We must defend ourselves from the lethal power of the juntas’ endless weaponry through the power of the people.

We must now boycott the junta’s own businesses.

That way

• We are systematically helping to reclaim our own rights and economy which has been stolen from us.

• We are protecting and defending our own rights and benefits,

• We are peacefully and lawfully answering the bullies instead of just tamely complying and suffering,

• We are staging the silent mass protest and demonstration, which reflects public solidarity,

• We are helping to stop the arrest, torture and killing of the monks, nuns, students, civilians and ethnic groups.

……..We must all participate …….

• This is an obligation for all of us Burmese who are denied all human rights,
• This is to secure the continued existence of our society into the future,
• This is our National movement.

To start to resolve all the issues and problems which beset our country, including poverty, the SPDC military junta must engage in meetings with public leaders including the ethnic groups and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. This is the only way that the country will be able to find peace and in time, to develop.

We will be maintaining these economic sanctions and boycotts until genuine discussions begin to find a clear resolution to our daily struggle with the problems of basic subsistence, maintaining health and gaining an education.

In solidarity and union, we will march forward together until we achieve these absolutely essential goals.

The Public Movement Organizing Committee

1 All Burma Monks Alliance (ABMA)
2 United Groups of Ethnic Youths
3 All Burma Federation of Students Union
4 8888 Generation Students
5 Peace loving Muslim Organization
6 Generation Wave (New Blood Youth Organization)
7 Lawyers Union
8 Poets Union
9 New Generation Journalists Union
10 Public Activities Development Committee (Mandalay)
11 Public Activities Development Committee (Rangoon)
12 Writers and Artists Group