A sense of honour
15/11/10 12:22 Filed in: Logbook
“You have not been a man of honour”, says the Burmese consulate official in Bangkok as he hands me back my passport.
This is the explanation I get for having my visa denied. Well, not denied outright, because, with a bizarre sense of irony, first they stuck the visa sticker into my passport and wrote ‘journalist’ on it, then they stamped ‘Cancelled’ on top.
In truth, I wasn’t completely honest with them: in the visa application I lied about my profession, but not about my motives. I said I wanted to go to Rangoon because it seemed an interesting time to go there.
All I told the official was something about him not being the best person to speak about honour.
They have granted me a visa in the past. It was almost like a game. I lied and they pretended to believe me. Evidently, this time, after the “election”, they don’t want too many witnesses.
Anatomy of a sham election
“Anatomy of a sham election” is the title of an article by Patrick Winn published on the Global Post website. Anatomy is the perfect term. It’s used when talking about a dead body. It's reserved for the mortuary, when the body lies cold on the slab, not for when it lies bleeding and beaten in the street, when some vague hope of recovery still lingers.
This is what has happened. Now, at this late stage, the whole of the West discovers that the Burmese election was a farce. The opposition party – the one opposed to the boycott called for by Aung San Suu Kyi – asks for an annulment. Before, they had come up with nothing except talk of the lesser evil, the only possibility, the lack of alternatives. In a certain sense, the governments of Asia and China have been more straightforward, sticking to their original judgement that the election is a “step forward”.
The best comment came from Tim Heinemann, a retired US Army colonel and head of Worldwide Impact Now, an NGO that assists oppressed peoples. “The election was like putting the facade of a church on a whorehouse».
This is the explanation I get for having my visa denied. Well, not denied outright, because, with a bizarre sense of irony, first they stuck the visa sticker into my passport and wrote ‘journalist’ on it, then they stamped ‘Cancelled’ on top.
In truth, I wasn’t completely honest with them: in the visa application I lied about my profession, but not about my motives. I said I wanted to go to Rangoon because it seemed an interesting time to go there.
All I told the official was something about him not being the best person to speak about honour.
They have granted me a visa in the past. It was almost like a game. I lied and they pretended to believe me. Evidently, this time, after the “election”, they don’t want too many witnesses.
Anatomy of a sham election
“Anatomy of a sham election” is the title of an article by Patrick Winn published on the Global Post website. Anatomy is the perfect term. It’s used when talking about a dead body. It's reserved for the mortuary, when the body lies cold on the slab, not for when it lies bleeding and beaten in the street, when some vague hope of recovery still lingers.
This is what has happened. Now, at this late stage, the whole of the West discovers that the Burmese election was a farce. The opposition party – the one opposed to the boycott called for by Aung San Suu Kyi – asks for an annulment. Before, they had come up with nothing except talk of the lesser evil, the only possibility, the lack of alternatives. In a certain sense, the governments of Asia and China have been more straightforward, sticking to their original judgement that the election is a “step forward”.
The best comment came from Tim Heinemann, a retired US Army colonel and head of Worldwide Impact Now, an NGO that assists oppressed peoples. “The election was like putting the facade of a church on a whorehouse».
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