October 14, 2012 Antonio Crdenas A01191911 David Hinojosa A0119 Genocide: Burma Summary and Historical Context:

Burma, also known as Myanmar is located in Southeast Asia its bordered by India, Bangladesh, China, Laos and Thailand. Burma has gone through so many problems at once its hard to talk only about one in particular. Most of Burmas problems come from its former reigning political party known as the SPDC, that stands for State Progress and Development Council, which was dissolved in March 30 2011, after 33 years of control. From 1988 to 1997, the SPDC was known as State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), which replaced the role of Burma Socialist Program Party (BSPP). In 1997, SLORC was reconstituted as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). The powerful regional military commanders, who were members of SLORC, were promoted to new positions and transferred to the capital of Rangoon. The SPDC consisted of eleven senior military officers thus, the members of The Junta wielded a great deal more power than the cabinet ministers. Although the regime retreated from the totalitarian Burmese Way to Socialism of BSPP when it took power in 1988, the regime was widely accused of human rights abuses; It rejected the 1990 election results and kept Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest until her release on November 13, 2010. This issue addresses a vast range of problems: from complete censorship, violation of the freedom of speech, nearly slave like working conditions, and mass murder.

Background: Most of it has been established in the previous paragraph, one of the factors in the realm of geography that wasnt mentioned previously is that the neighboring country, Bangladesh, denied most of the immigrants who tried to sneak into its territory. Theres a minority (population) thats made up of Muslims called the Rohingya that were constantly persecuted and murdered in Bangladesh.

Organizers: As it was previously mentioned the SPDC was the main responsible for the occurred events, they are the book example of a Totalitarian State in which a small Group of people were greatly benefited by exploiting the nation and terrorizing its citizens: they prevented any sort of rebellion by applying shock doctrines and having several oppressing governmental organisms as the state police. Their motive was mainly

power, the persecution of the Rohingya was purely hate for a different religion and intolerance due to a lack of education and global mind.

Victims: The victims include the Burmese people, who suffered exploitation. Still, the main victims are the Rahingya inhabitants, they were constantly persecuted and mass murdered by their intolerant government: they hid in jungles and sailed boats to Bangladesh hoping not to get caught. Most of the citizens only fled whenever government MOBS came to burn their villages in order to inflict terror and burden to their societies, as prevention means for rebellion. Nevertheless, refugee camps were widespread all over the country; their disadvantage is that they were overcrowded and life expectancy in the camps was reduced due to the lack of resources and hygiene they had. Theyre around 110,000 refugees around the previously mentioned countries. Still, the exact amount of deaths is still unknown due to the strict censorship and their evidence cleaning programs the SPDC had.

World Response: Many nations, such as the United States urged the United Nations (UN) to help, but the conflict was so big that the UN had to withdraw its troops given the pressure from various humanitarian unions such as the HRDP and other ONGs who wanted to maintain a neutral status in the conflict. Hence, nobody really got involved in the problem until the nation held for elections in 2011 after the previous ones (in 2010) were officially declared as fraudulent. This event finally managed to Kick out the SPDC and returned a democratic government to the country; so far the countrys government has not yet fall back into totalitarianism but chances are it might return, given the fact that society is already acquainted in living with repression and lacking personal rights. Aftermath: The fate of the members of the SDPC is unknown. Theres a new government and most of the problems are gone so far. However theyre still issues with Rohingya, there was recently a mass murder in which 76 Rohingyas were killed. Still, the problem has definitely decreased exponentially but it has not been solved.