Before we begin: From hereon I’m using the name “Burma” for the country that on many maps is named “Myanmar.” The name “Myanmar” was imposed by the current military dictatorship and is not the country’s true name.

Sixteen years ago, my primary school teacher wrote a name on the blackboard: Aung San Suu Kyi. “This woman” she said, “should be your hero.” She brought out a picture of a soft-featured Asian woman and explained that on that day she had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her non-violent resistance against the brutal military dictatorship in Burma. Suu Kyi had been elected Prime Minister the year before but was put under house arrest “for her own protection” by the military junta before taking office. Because of this, she was not allowed to attend the award ceremony in Oslo – in fact, there were concerns she wouldn’t even know she had been awarded the prestigious prize. “Not all people are free,” my teacher told us. “In some countries, speaking your mind and voicing your opinions means getting thrown in jail or worse. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can do something about it. You can stop the oppression of people like Aung San Suu Kyi and make the world a better place.” That day, we all wrote two letters in our broken English: One to Aung San Suu Kyi to tell her we were with her in her fight, and another one to the military dictatorship asking them to free her so she could come to Oslo to accept her award. And for a brief moment, I actually thought we were making a difference.

Much time passed and the world changed. Every now and again, I’d check in with Amnesty International only to see that Suu Kyi was still under house arrest and the military junta was still in control in the country. Other atrocities were played out on the world stage, countries were invaded, UN sanctions were engaged, embargoes were put in place, yet somehow Burma crept under the radar and the military rulers were left free to do what they wanted with the people they were holding hostage.

Then a couple of weeks ago a YouTube video dropped into my inbox. In it actor Jim Carrey talked about Aung San Suu Kyi and her plight, urging the world to take action. To me this was not news but reading the comments on the video page, I was astounded to note that almost no one knew about this woman and her story, let alone the plight of the Burmese people. And slowly a realization started to materialize: Burma is of no value to the big western powers like the United States. They have no vested interests in the country, there is no oil or other resources there and they pose no threat to western interests. So unlike Iraq, Iran, China or North Korea, Burma is irrelevant.

Well, not entirely irrelevant. It would turn out this week that Burma is an excellent decoy.

The last two weeks have seen a dramatic turn of events in this forgotten conflict. After its government quintupled gas prices, the people of Burma took to the streets in protest. The protesters were largely Buddhist monks and the protests themselves were non-violent. This is not the first time such protests have occurred but the military dictatorship imposes extreme restrictions on both national and world media, so such news in the past have never reached the outside world. But with the explosive growth of blogs and video sharing sites like YouTube, bloggers, citizen journalists and organizations started documenting the events and sharing them over the internet. As a result, the images of tens of thousands of orange robed monks walking the streets of Burma started appearing on computer screens and eventually on broadcast news all over the world. And just like that, the plight of the Burmese people and their jailed Prime Minister Aung San Suu Kyi became a hot political potato.

In a bizarre twist of fate, the escalation of the military dictatorship’s response to the protests coincided with Monday’s meeting in the United Nations, giving US President George W. Bush a valid excuse to ignore the speech from Iranian President Mahmod Ahmadinajad and the disastrous war in Iraq to focus instead on a real problem that needed to be solved immediately. And with that, due almost entirely to circumstance, the Burma situation became front page news all over the western world, in no small part thanks to the efforts of citizen journalists and brave bloggers. And it’s about time.

The question now is what happens next? The military dictatorship in Burma seems set on beating down the opposition with any means necessary. On Wednesday the military opened fire on the demonstrators, killing hundreds. For some unknown reason, the blatant killing of famed Japanese war journalist Kenji Nagais – an act which is heavily covered in Asia and Europe and which was documented by several cameramen – has been largely blacked out in North American media. The news outlets seem more concerned about covering the non-existent nuclear standoff between Iran and the US than the real battle being fought in the streets of Burma between unarmed civilians and an army with shoot-to-kill orders. So even with President Bush’s speech on Monday, it is unclear whether the US is willing to invest any more effort into finding a lasting solution. In the meantime, the people of Burma keep up the good fight against a military that has ruled them with an iron fist since 1962 and Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest unavailable to her people and unable to stop the impending bloodshed.

So, if this story upsets you (and it should), please take the time to share it with people you know, learn more about the situation in Burma through the Human Rights Action Center and the US Campaign for Burma and get involved! You can also join the Facebook group Support the Monks’ protest in Burma where you’ll find up-to-date information on the situation and the organizations that are working for the Burmese people. We can no longer sit idly by and watch this situation deteriorate.