Victoire Ingabire and Aung San Suu Kyi

Something smells 

By Michael McGehee:

Two countries.

Two dictatorships.

Two women.

Both are political opponents to an oppressive government.

Both jailed and put through a kangaroo court trial.

Meet Aung San Suu Ky, a Burmese dissident and political opponent to the status quo.

Now meet Victoire Ingabire, a Rwandan dissident and political opponent to the status quo.

There is only one difference between them, and it makes all the difference in the world.

Burma is not an ally of the United States. For decades the U.S. government has singled out Burma for punishment over its human rights record (while conveniently ignoring that of itself and its allies).

Rwanda, however, is an important ally of the U.S. Their dictator, President Paul Kagame, received military training at Fort Leavenworth. Kagame was aided throughout his invasion of Rwanda in 1990, and that support continued all the way through the assassination of former President Habyarimana and the genocide in 1994, when Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) overthrew the government and established the current regime. The U.S. has even stood behind Kagame as he and Uganda’s President Museveni invaded and occupied Democratic Republic of Congo, extinguishing between 6-10 million lives.

Through the pressure of U.S. and its allies Aung San Suu Kyi was eventually released and elected to office, which she will assume next week.

Ms. Ingabire, on the other hand, has received no support from the U.S. She sits in jail under bogus charges and awaits the finale of her kangaroo trial.

This bias extends beyond the U.S. government and to the New York Times, the so-called “paper of record” which cynically provides “all the news fit to print.”

As I have shown repeatedly throughout my column for the NYTimes eXaminer, the NYT is by now so embedded with the Western establishment that it reads like George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth from his classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Consider the following.

If you put in Victoire Ingabire’s name in the search engine at the NYT you will receive no more than 14 articles. A similar search for Aung San Suu Kyi will yield you 591 articles. That’s a ratio of 42 to 1.

The only significant difference between them is that, for one, their oppressor is an ally, while the others is not. It would be beyond the stretch of the imagination to believe that it is not that difference that exlpains how two women can be treated so dramatically different—not just by the U.S. government, but by the New York Times as well.

Not sure what Michael's beef with the NYTimes is but that aside Victoria Ingabire will probably get sentenced to life in prison on September 7. Amnesty International seem to have concerns as well.