Crackdown in Burma

From DocuWiki

1 General Information
2 Cover
3 Information
4 Screenshots
5 Technical Specs
6 Links

[edit] General Information

Culture Documentary published by CBC broadcasted as part of CBC Our World series in 2007 - English narration

[edit] Cover

[edit] Information

This week, we look at the crackdown in Burma: the tragic end of a protest
movement as a brutal regime turns its guns on its own people. And Brian
interviews a top diplomat in Afghanistan on surprising signs that the Taliban's
power may on the decline.

This week, tragedy hangs over Burma, or as it is also known, Myanmar. Gone, the
image of one hundred thousand peaceful demonstrators marching on the streets of
Rangoon, to protest against the repressive military dictatorship. For a while,
it looked like change might really be ahead for a country that has been closed
off from the rest of the world. The marches were the biggest pro democracy
protests in a generation. But military gunfire ended all that in a violent
crackdown. At first there was video footage of the shootings and the brutal
beatings. Now, the dictatorship has cut off most information coming out of the
country. Diplomats' reports and news items describe mass arrests; knocks on
doors in the middle of the night as soldiers round people up, in many cases,
brutally murdering the monks who led the protests. Reports are still sketchy
and we're still waiting to hear about the full situation in Myanmar.

The CBC's Patrick Brown is one of the few reporters who has been able to get
into the country in recent years. He has filed stories on the underground
democracy movement and on persecuted minorities there. We present two of his
reports, which give insight into the character of the military regime. In the
first report, Patrick reflects on the significance of the recent mass protests.
The second report, produced seven years ago, includes a very rare interview
with the opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, who
has been under house arrest for eighteen years.

Here at home Canadians remain deeply divided over Afghanistan, as they try to
balance their willingness to help a devastated country with their growing alarm
about casualties and rising violence. Janice Stein, a leading authority on
conflict zones heads one of Canada's largest think tanks on foreign affairs,
the Munk Centre for International Studies. She recently returned from a
research trip to Afghanistan and has co-authored a much-anticipated book on
Canada's involvement called, "The Unexpected War" due out later this month.
Brian speaks with her about the mission and what might happen when it ends.
Last winter, when Brian was in Kabul, he interviewed Chris Alexander, the UN's
top diplomatic troubleshooter in Afghanistan. Alexander is a former Canadian
ambassador to Afghanistan and knows the country, where he still works,
extraordinarily well. He was recently in Canada, and Brian talked to him about
the rumors of peace talks in Afghanistan.