By Tom Grace
Cooperstown News Bureau
Hank Nicols of Cooperstown says he cringes when he sees what has been happening in Myanmar.
Thousands of people, led by Buddhist monks, have been demonstrating against the repressive rule of generals who run this southeast Asian nation, formerly known as Burma.
Several demonstrators have been murdered. Others have been rounded up and taken away in military trucks, several news sources have reported.
Nicols, an adjunct professor with the State University of New York at Buffalo, has been to Myanmar several times, teaching courses in educational psychology.
``The last time I was there was in May,’’ he said Thursday. ``I have several friends and colleagues in Myanmar, and I’ve been trying to keep in touch with them, but e-mail and the Internet are tightly regulated by the government.
``The government uses wiretapping and e-mail interception as a means to control the population, and it works,’’ Nicols said.
Secret police interrogate citizens without any court supervision and those who oppose the ruling elite are treated as terrorists.
``People are afraid to talk on the phone. They’re afraid to send e-mail and snail-mail messages because they never know who is reading or listening in.’’
In Myanmar, ``People are arrested and never seen again,’’ he said.
``I have never met a more gentle people, or a people more deserving or in need of our support,’’ he said. ``Their Buddhist background and history have made it possible for the military regime to survive for three decades, but I hope this time they break free. They deserve the chance.’’
Nicols, a former Democratic election commissioner in Otsego County and chairman of the county Democratic Committee, noted that the protest has been based spiritually on the nation’s Buddhist monks, and on Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Suu Kyi, 62, is technically Myanmar’s prime minister-elect because she won the 1990 election, but she has been held under house arrest for years by the military.
According to a story in the New York Times Friday afternoon, ``the current crisis began on Aug. 19, after the government increased fuel prices overnight by as much as 500 percent, without any announcement or explanation.
``That move sparked scattered protests that were led at first by longtime dissidents, most of whom had been involved in the student protests of 1988. The 1988 protests were crushed by force as the military shot into crowds, killing an unknown number of people that could have ranged into the thousands.
``Both the events of 1988 and the recent demonstrations tapped into deep discontent and anger over the economic mismanagement and harsh rule of the junta,’’ the New York Times reported.
Some of Nicols’ friends have managed to contact him, he said.
``I have friends who’ve said facetiously that they wish Myanmar had oil, because then the Untied States would invade,’’ he said.
Currently, the United States and other nations have imposed economic sanctions on Myanmar, but these restrictions on trade ``tend to hurt the small people, not the powerful,’’ he said.
Nicols said he dared not disclose the names of his friends because they might be hunted down by government agents. In their e-mails, they often use code words to avoid writing terms that would alert e-mail censors, he said.
One American woman in her 30s recently wrote: ``We are all OK here. It is all the people who are êinvolved’ that we worry about. We are waiting by the phones at night for calls. We have a curfew of 9 p.m,, and no groups more than 5 people. The people walked again today from the main pag Swe. (code for the Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar’s holiest shrine) toward other areas. There are stories of some beatings, we don’t have any facts as of yet. Not sure what will happen.’’
A Burmese teacher in Yangon, formerly Rangoon, Myanmar’s capital, wrote, ``For those of us who had the experience of ’88, we are very nervous especially about what the next couple of days will be like. Our protesters know what the consequences are and they have risked their lives and are defying the orders. We hope that some peaceful means will end this unrest, but that is not likely. Thank you and pray for our people.’’
