11.03.2007
Candid Commentary
Can Sanctions Promote Human Rights?
_ By Dr. Tayza
Before becoming a full-time political activist, I was once a medical doctor; and, when we were in medical school we had to learn that even a very good life-saving drug may have serious side-effects. And we were also taught that a doctor has to cut off a gangrenous limb, without anaesthesia in urgent situations even though it gives unbearable pain to the patient, to save a life. And patients frequently have to swallow bitter medicines to recover their health.
So now, although I am no longer practising medicine, I still frequently find occasions which need bitter medicine or painful surgery to get rid of foul-smelling socio-political illnesses.
Applying sanctions on despotic dictatorships around the world is very much like giving bitter medicine to a patient.
I am not denying the fact that putting economic sanctions on a military regime of a country can have some unintentional side-effects on ordinary people of the country. But there are basically only three options to deal with a dictatorship regime_ to make a regime change by force like our Bush and Blair did to the loathsome Saddam Hussein regime; to apply pressure to force a regime towards reforms, like what is being done on Burma’s military junta; or to appease and collaborate with dictators, like Chamberlain and Vichy did to Hitler.
When an injured limb becomes gangrenous, you can chop off the limb and quickly get rid of the gangrene once and for all; or, you can swallow bitter medicines to contain the spreads of gangrene and to gradually reverse its course; or, you can let the gangrene prevail and you die, like the disgrace and demise of Chamberlain and Vichy.
And some say that sanctions are not effective. They say that never in the world’s history a dictatorship regime has been forced out of power by sanctions. It just shows that they don’t know what they are talking about. Sanctions are never meant to bring down a dictatorship regime, in Cuba or in Burma or wherever. Sanctions are just used as a mean of containment to stop the spread of a political disease. Thanks to US-led sanctions on Cuba, the whole South America was saved from falling into Communist Abyss. Thanks to the same or similar measures applied on Communist Vietnam, the entire South East Asian region was spared from the fate of being totally swamped by Communist Bird-flu.
If you don’t want to die of overwhelming gangrene and also don’t want to chop off the gangrenous limb, you at least need to contain it. Contain it with bitter medicines whether you like the taste or not! And remember, when you take a medicine, there can be adverse side-effects; you just have to tolerate it.
Burma’s military regime is committing attempted genocide, using rape as a state-sponsored weapon for ethnic-cleansing, is guilty of using child-soldiers and forced-labour, is persecuting severely on political opposition, is corrupt, is holding power illegitimately, is expending its military, is building nuclear weapons, is producing huge quantities of Heroin and stimulant drugs, is exporting HIV and infectious diseases, and is forcing out floods and waves of refugees…….never ending list of regime’s sins. In a rather Clintonesque expression, let me say “It’s sanctions, stupid”.
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