Bombing Burma with Bloomers
Activists exasperated at the failure of diplomacy to apply pressure on Burma’s military regime are resorting to a new means of protest against the regime’s recent crackdown: sending female underwear to Burmese embassies.
Embassies in the UK, Thailand, Australia and Singapore have all been targeted by the “Panties for Peace” campaign, co-ordinated by an activist group based in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
The manoeuvre is a calculated insult to the junta and its leader, General Than Shwe. Superstitious junta members believe that any contact with female undergarments – clean or dirty – will sap them of their power, said Jackie Pollack, a member of the Lanna Action for Burma Committee.
More after the jump.
In the end, “Panties for Peace” won’t stop a single killing nor will it get a single protestor out of Burma’s dank prisons, but it will draw more attention to a situation that, quite frankly, hasn’t spent as much time as a top story than Paris Hilton’s prison stay or the travails of Brangelina.
But at least it’s something. And if it does nothing more than draw some much-needed attention to the barbarism of the junta, then it’s done a lot more than the UN’s diplomatic efforts which, thus far, have produced a few pictures of the head UN diplomat smiling next to an elated tyrant and a terrified dissident who was promptly throw back into prison after the photo op.
Nevertheless, there are some whose slavish devotion to the abject failures of the UN cause them to pooh-pooh the panty-senders. Because, you know, it’s silly.
I don’t exactly believe in the power of panties over the diplomacy of the United Nations, but as a form of global mocking, the campaign seems promising. Still, I can’t help feeling that the silliness of this symbolic offensive makes light of a dire situation — so I won’t be parting with my panties anytime soon, thank you.
I have to say, given the track record of UN diplomats over the years in Rwanda, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Darfur, Iraq, Indonesia, and dozens of other places, I’d rather try something audacious and a bit silly than to rely on UN diplomacy to stop a tyrant.
(via memeorandum)
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