Myanmar Journal: Where is the Humanity?
The following thread is being written by a vipassana meditator from the tradition of S.N. Goenka who is currently in Myanmar, who has played a pivotal role in the organization’s mission. For his safety, personal details have been obscured, but he has made it his desire that his observations be read by meditators everywhere. Please note that we are now able to ensure donations reach this person as well as the community he is supporting. Please consider making a contribution.
“With guns pointed at this monk, they told him he had better get away.”
Many days it just feels as if there is no more room for the sadness. Day after day there are just further and even greater atrocities which we are exposed to and each day the noose that has been placed around our necks becomes tighter and tighter.
In the past 10 days it has been especially difficult for me to share updates with others. While I continue to write each day, I find it more and more impossible to write in a way that can come close to expressing the intense horrors and desperation that consumes us each day.
The past 2 weeks I have not been able to share much of anything due to health issues I have been facing as well as just utter despair. I think I speak for everyone here when I say that as a country we just feel largely so alone. This in no way takes away from the amazing support we have received from so many. I hope that one day there will be an opportunity for me to explain all of this to those who have made it possible for us to assist others. In fact, most of the past 3 weeks has been devoted to putting the generosity of many of you into tangible actions.
But providing such help and getting that help to where it is most needed has been quite challenging and time consuming.
The simple act of helping another human being is, in many cases against the law and breaking these laws is punishable by 3-7 years of prison or even worse. Two days ago we were asked for help which we were happy to provide. In normal times this would not have taken more than 10 minutes but under present circumstance it took the better part of a day and sadly had to put at risk several people. Just for trying to help another person in acute distress. Much worse than that has been situations where people have been shot and lay wounded in the street. You cannot even go out to retrieve them because those that try will also be shot. Instead, hiding just 20 feet away, all you can do is just watch the blood drain out of their bodies.
In another situation after shooting scores of people soldiers went though the streets and piled the dead and wounded like cordwood in the middle of the road. A Buddhist monk approached the soldiers begging them to allow the people to remove the wounded, so that they could be tended to. With guns pointed at this monk, they told him he had better get away. In another situation a woman was shot in the street and the police taunted civilians by challenging them to try and come and save her.
How can any of this really be happening? Where is the rest of humanity?
The United Nations Security Council (or as it is now referred to, the United Nothing Security Council) recently met for 2 hours and for me to watch was incredibly disheartening and offered further proof as to just how out of touch with the reality that is occurring here. To listen to them, it was as if they were just reading from a menu or a telephone book. Completely absent was any sense of humaneness. Just more words. They talked about the likelihood of blood bath in the future. Like us, maybe there internet has been cut off and they have missed the videos and reports coming from here. They talked about the need for action before a civil war breaks out! Oh my god……it’s already going on! Intense battles between citizens and the regime are breaking out every day! A few days ago and just a few hours from us battles broke out between the junta and ethnic armies and just yesterday another such battle occurred only 5 hours away.
I completely fail to understand the purpose of the UN and instead just see them as being completely impotent.