Dr. Salai Tun Than Update

Yesterday, Dr. Salai Tun Than tried to board Thai Airways flight 303 to Rangoon. The airline refused to allow him to board. He had a valid, legally-obtained passport. He passed the security check. But the Burma government threatened to discontinue the airline's service in Burma if they let him board.

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/breakingnews/read.php?newsid=30006802

Shortly thereafter, he was in contact with people at the BLC. And Eric and I got to help him get in contact with the rest of the world. It was a mad, desperate scramble of strategizing, researching and writing -- on a day the Internet was down. Oh, the adrenaline. We had a few scant hours to craft a letter and legal-ish analysis of his case for other advocacy groups.

It wasn't really lawyer work, more journalism than anything else, but it still was pretty exciting. If and when he gets back to Burma through legal channels, I'll feel a tiny connection to that achievement.

At the same time, it was a little depressing. The objective is to help him get back to Burma ... so he can do a protest against the government ... which will get him arrested or killed. (And after reading about Burma's prisons, I think death is the less horrific outcome.) And I'm not really happy with that.

But I cannot explain how much I respect him for doing this. For every way that he has gone about this campaign.

The element that I find particularly noble is the fact that he insists upon working within the law. Burma is a country that ONLY operates effectively beyond the official procedures. Dr. Salai Tun Than waited two years for a legal passport and longer for a US visa, when he had the money to obtain one illegally far quicker. It doesn't cost much to bribe a border guard to sneak into Burma from Mae Sot (so I hear, Mom, I haven't done it and I'm not going to).

But Dr. Salai Tun Than believes that there is dignity to the legal process, to following legal procedures and acting within the law, even when it's inconvenient or to his disadvantage. Despite the unfairness of the vast majority of Burma's laws, he is still honoring his compact of citizenship and following them. And I completely agree with him. I think it's noble.

I would choose the same route. While I agree with civil disobedience in principle, I feel that my life has been deeply enhanced by America's laws. And I am proud to live within the law as much as it is in my power to do so. I waited until I was 21 to drink alcohol in the United States. I've never tried drugs, etc. And I consider that to the absolute minimum of my civic duty.



And, for the life of me, I can't understand why someone would willingly sacrifice their dignity by doing something they know is illegal. I REALLY don't understand how any law student, a person whom one would expect to have some respect for the law, would do something illegal, like drugs. It feels hypocritical somehow. Though, it's slightly more hypocritical when a drug-doing classmate says they want to be a public prosecutor. And funny. But more sad than anything.



I'm sorry to have made any comparison between Dr. Salai Tun Than and loser classmates. Forgive me.