6/2/2023

My Dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,

            Since it is the 2nd day of the month, I am writing you two letters, a somber on & a regular one. This is the somber one. As you can probably guess, it’s about Burma.

            I had to go to Twitter today to get fresh news on the situation there. While I was grateful to see that none of the tweets were about new violence, one was a link to an article in the Telegraph about the junta’s April 11 attack on the village of Pa Zi Gyi that killed at least 170 people including children.

            Here are the chilling excerpts from the article:

photos and videos, which have been seen by the Telegraph, are too distressing to publish outside of a war crimes tribunal

The massacre strongly suggests the military is deliberately targeting civilians to create terror.

Dave Eubank, leader of the Free Burma Rangers (FBR), says “It seems like someone made a policy shift because, since the year started, at least once a week somewhere in Karen or Karenni state there has been a church or school bombed directly. They have always been hitting churches & schools but not so systematically…when you have attacks every week, that is not an accident.

the attacks on the innocent people of Myanmar will not stop “until the dictators fall & there is a determination that they are not going back”. 

Tirana Hassan, executive director of Human Rights Watch, urges the international community to do more to stop the carnage…

PLEASE DO MORE TO DRAW ATTENTION TO THIS HORRIFIC SITUATION

I hope to find the energy write about both joy & sorrow in one letter. As you know, both are inevitable in this world & we are called to open ourselves to the full breadth of human experience while we inhabit these Earthly bodies. Let it be.

BYBS,

RCA