“Good intentions backfired”
After reading Dominic Nardi’s piece on six hours spent in a D.C. jail (Nov. 13, “Tale of a Georgetown jailbird,” Voices) I felt thoroughly disgusted at his attempt to draw a parallel between his own life and those of millions of people in Myanmar who suffer under the dictatorial rule of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) that is in control of the country.
Truly, the thought of living in Myanmar is utterly daunting. Justice is little more than a joke there, and political prisoners are regularly imprisoned indefinitely without trial. A few hours in a D.C. holding cell, where one can be confident that the rule of law will prevent any gross violation of human rights, can hardly be compared to years spent in a prison in Myanmar under torturous conditions with knowing if the scheduled date of release will be conveniently delayed for a few more years.
Nardi makes a good point that the loss of freedom is a terrible travesty, and that we should empathize with those who do not share the same access to a judicious society such as our own. However, his hyperbolic characterization of his own situation only serves to cheapen the message and make it look like a spineless wimp. His greatest problem was that he feared using the bathroom with another man in close proximity.
I can only be too thankful that the leaders of the civil rights movement had a little more fortitude that Nardi, or we might be languishing under segregation to this day.
Can you imagine if Dr. King’s “Letters From A Birmingham Jail” consisted of such platitudes as, “Today one of the guards was mean to me. I can’t take this anymore. I am giving up. I hope that the sandwiches have the crust cut off or I will just cry myself to sleep tonight.” Whining has never been a successful route to enacting change, except in the case of toddlers. With this in mind, I would like to highlight some of the real problems that the people of Myanmar face.
Myanmar is the same country that gave us God’s Army a few years back, headed by two children barely into their teen years, Johnny and Luther Htoo. Near the border of Thailand God’s Army carried out various raids and even some managed to garner international attention both from having boy leaders who were thought to be invincible and also because they created some high profile hostage situations. These sort of terrorist acts were not entirely unforgivable. The God’s Army was made up of fighters from the Karen ethnic group that has been under continuous persecution from the government of Myanmar. The attacks were often staged to attract attention and create international dialogue about the long-suffering of the Karen people.
The government of Myanmar has a long list of abuses that ranges from employing children as soldiers to denying free elections within the country. Citizens of Myanmar are subject to forced labor whenever the army wants to make them do something. If the army needs food, they simply take the crops they need. There is no freedom of the press, no right to gather freely and people are routinely arrested without cause and tortured. The judiciary branch is beholden to the government and extremely corrupt. The military routinely carries out armed offensives against various ethnic groups within Myanmar. Non-Buddhist groups are most likely to be targeted for attack.
Clearly, Nardi’s heart is in the right place. Opposing the government of Myanmar is unconditionally the just thing to do. It is lamentable that his august intentions have backfired with the very readers that he hoped to impress. A thousand word tract on why it stinks to not have a television in jail, and how harrowing the thought of using the bathroom is with another man present hardly justifies Nardi’s assertion that his stay taught him how incredibly painful it can be to lose ones freedom. I have no television in my apartment. I decided it truly was a vast wasteland years ago, so maybe I should also be crying to the heavens about my own disastrous life. If I can offer any advice, please ignore Nardi’s egocentrism and pretentiousness and realize that there are people in the world who have real problems that aren’t fixed after a few hours in a holding cell.
—Patrick Rial (CAS ‘03)
