Sidewinder wrote: I wonder if Liz is related to Paris. Such an... absurd... means of protest seems like something that airheaded heiress would think of.
Weird though this may sound, it makes a lot of sense.
The generals who make up the Myanmar Junta are intensely superstitious. They believe in signs and portents, they consult astrologers before making any moves, they use mediums to consult the dead heroes of the past etc etc etc. In short, these guys are nuts.
Now, the prevailing mythos in Myanmar is one of the Priest-King, the ruler who combines both secular and religious authority. That's why the demonstrations by monks were so dangerous; they hit right at the heart of the mythology that the Myanmar Junta depends on to maintain its authority. Now, one of the things about Bhuddist priests is that they are not allowed to touch anything female. To give you an example of this, when I was working in Thailand on RTADS I had a Thai girlfriend. Nothing unusual there, everybody in Thailand has a girlfriend - except the Monks. Every so often we used to go to a temple where my girlfriend would make offerings to the monks. By doing so, she would gain merit and that would be in her favor when her next incarnation came around. The only problem was that a Monk isn't allowed to touch anything that has been touched by a woman immediately before. To do so would be to expose himself to temptation and reduce his merit. So, my girlfriend would give her offerings to me and I would give them to the monks on her behalf. That way, the proprietories were respected and everything was fine.
Obviously, the more intimate the contact with a woman, the more problematic the contact becomes. Viewed from this respect, a woman sending a pair of her panties to the Myanmar Junta is incredibly damaging, its bringing great discredit upon them and inflicting severe harm on their priest-king image. This assumes that the lady in question had worn said panties before sending them. If they were both worn and unwashed, the insult is almost unimaginable, it would make spitting in the man's face seem a friendly gesture of respect.
It's worse than just an insult, its striking at the very heart of the beliefs that are the primary foundation of the Myanmar Junta's claim to authority (authority, not power).
At the last count, the Myanmar Junta has arrested five Generals and more than 400 troops for refusing to obey orders to fire on the monks demonstrating in Yangon and Mandalay. That's an enormous crack in the system of power. Now, we have women from all over the world striking at one of the key beliefs that provide the Myanmar Junta with its power.
This may sound ridiculous to us, but in the context of the belief system that the Myanmar Junta depends upon to maintain its power, its a telling blow. It won't be decisive on its own but as part of a concerted effort to chip away at the support system of the Myanmar Junta, its a significant blow.
In our context, its the equivalent of a politician who'd campaigned on a "family values" platform being found in bed with a dead girl
and a live boy.
That's... new to me.
