Newsnight on 3 April reports from Burma

Newsnight on 3 April 2012 included a report by Sue Lloyd Roberts from Kachin in Burma.  How pleased with the election result should we be or is there still a long way to go before Burma is democratic?

You can read Sue Lloyd Robert's report about the plight of the Kachin people in the far north of Burma.

Zoya Phan writes in the Guardian that Aung San Suu Kyi's victory does not bring Burma freedom.  Zoya Phan writes about the continued persecution of ethnic groups such as her own, the Karen.

I have also been reading a book by Emma Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma.  A while ago I read an earlier edition with a different title.  Orwell was in Burma in the 1920s as an officer in the Imperial Police Force.  After five years he returned to Britain, determined to be a writer. 

Larkin writes that there is a joke in Burma that Orwell wrote three books about the country, Burmese Days, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.  I quoted that joke when I wrote about two of Orwell's books in this blog but I could not remember where I had read it.  I also wrote on my blog about Newspeak, the version of English envisioned by Orwell that limited the ability to think.