Free the Burmese

Revisiting Rwanda
Your depiction of Rwanda's president as a strongman dictator who rules through repressive measures like the death penalty is far from the truth ("Rwanda Turns Off," Oct. 15). President Paul Kagame was elected with 95 percent of the popular vote in Rwanda's recent elections and was awarded "the Abolitionist of 2007" by the Italian prime minister for abolishing the death penalty in Rwanda. In fact, Amnesty International reports on its Web site that the last executions in Rwanda took place in 1998, two years before Kagame became president. You wrongly imply that a Tutsi elite has grown wealthy at the expense of the majority. The visible wealth in Rwanda's capital has largely been a result of investment by those returning from the diaspora, many of whom are children of Tutsi refugees who fled the genocide. These new residents bring investment, Western education and entrepreneurship—all much needed in Rwanda. You're right to point out the role of the media in the horrendous genocide of 1994, which makes it all the more shocking that you use the same tactics of printing ethnically charged half-truths to support a shaky argument.
Paul Stewart
Kigali, Rwanda

Sarkozy ' s France
How can Nicolas Sarkozy deal with debt-ridden France when he takes an extravagant vacation soon after becoming president ("Shaking Up the Continent," Sept. 3)? Will the sale of weapons to Libya help rid France of its national debt, which has been affecting the country for more than a decade? What can be expected from old faces like Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Bernard Kouchner, whom Sarkozy has chosen to run the administration? They have failed in the past. Not to mention Alain Juppé, who was once mired in a big scandal with former president Jacques Chirac and was finally forced to quit Sarkozy's cabinet. Did not President Sarkozy blunder by having Juppé join his government? Sarkozy wants more time to cut deficit spending, but he should also consider cuts in the big salaries enjoyed by most top civil servants. This should have been done years ago. When a country is weighed down by a huge national debt, incurred by the same pundits and politicians for nearly two decades, it is time for change, for the president to tighten his administration's belt and tackle the budget deficit. The key issues are domestic problems such as joblessness. Sarkozy's response to the case of a 61-year-old pedophile, who after being jailed twice for 27 years, raped another child soon after he was released, was to suggest that a special prison be built to confine all pedophiles! Instead of hiring more staff, Sarkozy adopted the same failed policy of the previous government. Unemployment, underemployment, stagnation and corruption are the problems in France. Sarkozy wants to apply economic solutions to many areas of life. If only he would do what he preaches. Today's main concern is to halt the rise in unemployment that continues to widen the gap between those with a job and those without.
Dan Chellumben
Amboise, France

Turkey at the Crossroads
Apropos your articles on Turkey ("The End of Secularism," and "An Army in Retreat," Sept. 3), the election of Abdullah Gul with a simple majority vote as the new president of Turkey, along with its largely Muslim population, does not augur well for this traditionally secular nation. Ever since he was the foreign minister, Gul has been known to be an Islamic hard-liner like Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister elected in 2002. In the wake of the global resurgence of Islam, Turks seem to have re-discovered their religious identity that lay buried under the European brand of secularism imposed by Kemal Ataturk in 1923. The people also forgot Erdogan was imprisoned for four months by the all-powerful military for inciting religious extremism by reciting to a crowd a poem glorifying Islam. With both the president and the prime minister belonging to the AKP party, and with massive electoral support from the Muslims, Turkey might be on the verge of jettisoning its secularism. In fact, after the election of Erdogan, Turkey was considered the Trojan horse of Islamic extremism and the EU was wary of admitting it into the Union. Now with Gul heading the country in defiance of the Turkish military, the prospect of Turkey's being admitted into the EU has further dimmed. This is not good for the country. Isolated from industrialized Europe, it might gradually drift toward the Islamic nations. Remember that Erdogan's mentor, the leader of the banned proIslamic Welfare Party that had come to power in 1996, had visited Libya and Iran to develop friendly ties with them. But the Turkish military, acting as the sentinel of secularism, swiftly deposed him in 1997. Aligning with hard-line Islamic countries would also alienate Turkey from the West, which would affect its economy. And with the chances of admission to the EU vanishing, the government would no longer accommodate the separatist Kurds who might be provoked into committing acts of terrorism. Worse, with the EU having already admitted Greek Cyprus as a member, there might erupt armed confrontation between the Turkish and Greek governments on the island and unification of Cyprus might become a permanently closed chapter. The Turkish military can still play a positive role by reining in the two leaders. With its secular orientation, it acts as the sentinel against hard-line Islamic fundamentalism.
Sharad C. Misra
Mumbai, India

Translations of Tolstoy
With reference to "Lost in Translations" (Oct. 15), Malcolm Jones surprisingly does not mention the most authentic and widely read translation of Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace" by Louise and Aylmer Maude. The Maudes lived in Moscow, knew the Russian language firsthand and were personally acquainted with Tolstoy, who said, "Better translators could not be invented." As a Tolstoy scholar who has written a book and a Ph.D. thesis on "Tolstoy's Search for the Meaning of Life," I was disappointed that Jones mentioned Constance Garnett but not Aylmer Maude. It appears he has not done his homework.
Narendra Kumar
Chandigarh, India

Malcolm Jones clearly shows his support for the new version of "War and Peace" translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. But I'm confused by the translated excerpts placed side by side in comparison. Jones writes, "Like a pair of twins, each has its own character." I fail to see how each has its own character in that the sentences are exactly alike but for a few syntactic tricks. Furthermore, the Anthony Briggs translation apparently makes use of better word choice, making it feel more like prose that does not support the author's position. These side-by-side translations presuppose that your readers are literary evolutionists; instead, let us see them placed alongside the original Russian. For example, was "joie de vivre" (a borrowed phrase from French) in the original Russian, or was that a result of Briggs's attempt at classy prose? Further, and perhaps more important, is he being true to the original? That would hardly seem "brisk and efficient."
James Campbell
Linguist and Chinese Dialectologist
Taipei, Taiwan

Remembering Pavarotti
Kudos to Andrew Moravcsik for his "Appreciation" of the late, great Luciano Pavarotti (Sept. 17). Being older than Pavarotti by a decade and belonging to the old "school tie" generation of British education, which required beautiful odes and sonnets to be recited from memory, the passing of Pavarotti and, some decades ago, of his role model, Enrico Caruso, reminds me of the poet William Cowper's prescience in his "Ode to Boadicea": "Other Romans shall arise/Heedless of a soldier's name;/Sounds, not arms, shall win the prize,/Harmony the path to fame."
Jamshed K. Fozdar
Singapore