Anyone who has observed what happened in Burma and the aftermath - in particular the military regime's indifference to the suffering of its people - will readily agree with MikeCarlton in his op-ed piece in today's SMH:
"If hell exists, there ought to be an especially fiery corner set aside for Senior General Than Shwe, the pudding-faced thug who heads the junta which controls Burma, or Myanmar as he would like us call his wretched country.
You might have seen him on television this week, ostentatiously dispensing neatly wrapped gift boxes to grateful victims of the cyclone that left who knows how many Burmese dead, injured and homeless. It was a grisly propaganda charade. Sleek in elevated heels and a tailored uniform encrusted with enough medals to embarrass even an old-style Soviet marshal, smiling like an alligator, he posed as the bountiful father of the nation.
The reality is rather different. The medals, we can safely assume, were won waging war on his own people. Than Shwe is a mass murderer. The regime's paranoid refusal to accept vital foreign relief for Burma is a crime against humanity on an epic scale."
"If hell exists, there ought to be an especially fiery corner set aside for Senior General Than Shwe, the pudding-faced thug who heads the junta which controls Burma, or Myanmar as he would like us call his wretched country.
You might have seen him on television this week, ostentatiously dispensing neatly wrapped gift boxes to grateful victims of the cyclone that left who knows how many Burmese dead, injured and homeless. It was a grisly propaganda charade. Sleek in elevated heels and a tailored uniform encrusted with enough medals to embarrass even an old-style Soviet marshal, smiling like an alligator, he posed as the bountiful father of the nation.
The reality is rather different. The medals, we can safely assume, were won waging war on his own people. Than Shwe is a mass murderer. The regime's paranoid refusal to accept vital foreign relief for Burma is a crime against humanity on an epic scale."
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