Free the Burmese

Brutalities in Burma
Fareed Zakaria's Oct. 15 World View on sanctions against Burma was the most concise and logical article I have read about that country ("Sleepwalking to Sanctions, Again"). At last, someone finally did some homework and read the history of Burma and what it has gone through for the last 150 years. Naturally, the Burmese don't trust outsiders because of what outsiders have done to them during the last century. All they wanted was their independence from foreign rule, and those promises were always broken. Why punish them further with sanctions? Leave them alone. They are savvier than we think.
Esther M. Smedvig
London, England

I am writing about your coverage of the protests in Rangoon ("The Monks' Uprising," Oct. 8). The military regime in Burma should hand over the government to the elected leaders. They cannot keep brutalizing people. In the 1988 protests, 3,000 citizens were killed. And for the past 11 years, Aung San Suu Kyi, an elected leader and a Nobel Prize winner, has lived under house arrest, completely isolated, except for a maid, a doctor's monthly visits and her jailers. She should be released immediately. Why is there no international or U.N. pressure on such tin-pot military dictators?
Rajendra K. Aneja
Dubai, U.A.E.

The brutal force let loose on innocent Buddhist monks and civilians by the military rulers in Burma should be condemned by democracy-loving people all over the world. A predominantly Buddhist country, Burma was once a prosperous nation that exported rice to other countries in Asia. The military junta that threw out a democratic government and captured power by force about 25 years ago has ruled Burma with an iron fist for far too long. As it is isolated from the rest of the world by its undemocratic junta, very little news about the atrocities committed by the regime trickles out. However, enough evidence is available about how the military top brass live it up while the economy is crumbling and the poor masses are suffering. My cousins who migrated to Burma from Sri Lanka during World War II are still there, and I worry about them. A country that produced the eminent U.N. Secretary-General U Thant is now in turmoil. The United States and other powerful nations should take positive action through the United Nations to put an end to this massacre of the innocents.
Lionel Rajapakse
Kandy, Sri Lanka

Imagine if the present street protests in Rangoon were held instead in Ramallah or Hebron, if the Buddhist monks were Palestinian Arabs, and the soldiers of the Burmese military junta were the Israeli Defense Forces. Imagine if the last time this was tried, 3,000 were butchered and many more injured and imprisoned. Then imagine the worldwide protest rallies, the economic and academic boycotts, the emergency U.N. meetings and the vilification of the tiny state of Israel. One must ask why there is so little interest in or support for the truly brutalized people of the world.
John Lalor
Dublin, Ireland

Forgetting the Past in Spain
At the time of Franco's death, I was living in Chicago with my wife and child. I lived there for 10 years and had the opportunity to observe the enormous obsession of the American media with Franco's life and death. Thirty years later, your reporters are keeping this obsession alive. Sarah Wildman's Oct. 15 article "The Longest Shadow" misses the main point: José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's attempt to forge the "law of historic memory" is plain electioneering, with very little substance behind it. Most of us—on both sides—suffered losses during the Civil War. We treat that as part of history, and expect nothing good from these political suggestions that perpetuate only their respective chairs and payrolls.
Federico Arrizabalaga
Valencia, Spain

As a Spanish citizen living in Spain since my retirement in 1998 after 41 years abroad, I am shocked, disgusted and scandalized by your article "The Longest Shadow." Your writer obviously does not live in the same Spain as I do. Spain came to terms with its Civil War after the death of Franco, when all political parties agreed to forget the past and get on with the future without accusations or recriminations. This was called Los Pactos de Moncloa, or the Pacts of Moncloa, after the residence of the prime minister. It is only since the arrival (by accident) of Prime Minister Rodríguez Zapatero that he has tried to pit one half of Spain against the other, and this, 65 years after the end of the Civil War. This law, called Historic Memory, has been criticized not only by the Popular Party but also by the ex-prime minister Felipe González and Fernando Mujica, the Spanish defensor del pueblo, or ombudsman, who is also socialist. It is time that your reporters writing on Spain got their facts right. It's not the first time that their ignorance about Spain shows.
Carlos Bonafonte
via internet from Spain