Burma : The Next Killing Fields?

Foreword by the Dalai Lama

This emotionally gripping book tells the story of Burma's struggle for independence and democracy, based on interviews with hundreds of Burmese from ordinary citizens to freedom fighters in the jungle.

This brief book serves effectively to raise one's consciousness about Burma, also known as Myanmar. Clements, an American who studied as a Buddhist monk in Burma and now heads a human rights organization focusing on the country, begins with a thumbnail sketch of Burma's history. He recounts how he returned to Burma in 1990 to bear witness to the military repression of democracy, a situation that offers chilling parallels to life in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. During a two-day trip to the nation's capital, Rangoon, he found "Big Brother" politics and heard testimony about state violence. He later arranged an illegal, two-week visit to northeastern Burma, where students and ethnic Karen soldiers fight the government. There he found evidence of great bravery and idealism. After democratic leader Daw Aung Suu Kyi was awarded the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, repression intensified, and earlier this year Clements returned to the war zone, interviewing captured government soldiers. Crucial to the regime's survival, he notes, is support from Western businesses and China. He concludes with a section on how people can urge sanctions and other steps to further human rights in Burma. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Clements, an American who spent seven years in Burma, five of them as a Buddhist monk, records in this extended essay his observations of conditions in that most unfortunate country. Since leaving Burma in 1987, he has twice returned in order to assess the current political situation. His graphic but realistic account portrays a nation, much like Cambodia in the 1970s, where the government has declared war on its people. The book concludes with a three-page "how you can help" section. This work deserves to be in every library so that Americans can learn of the gross violations of human rights presently taking place in Burma.
- Donald Clay Johnson, Univ. of Minnesota Lib., Minneapolis
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.