About 30 students, faculty and community members attended “Burma’s Crisis: What Should Outsiders Do?” at Encina Hall yesterday afternoon for a discussion on possible ways to respond to the Southeast Asian country’s oppressive military junta.

Burma’s military has used violence to end pro-democracy protests and arrested thousands of people in recent months, and these crack-downs have prompted international condemnation. Tens of thousands of Burmese have poured onto the streets of cities like Rangoon (Yangon) and Mandalay to join monk-led demonstrations.

While news of the mounting protests has been coming out of Burma (Myanmar) for the past month, panelists Maureen Aung-Thwin, director of the Burma Project, and Maung Zarni, founder of Free Burma Coalition, told yesterday’s audience about their ongoing efforts to call upon the international community to make a change.

Aung-Thwin said outsiders ought to impose more targeted sanctions on the Burmese military junta. She called for more aggressive intervention and said one mechanism of psychological pressure would be to target the country’s public relations interests.

Instead of boycotting the Chinese Olympics, Aung-Thwin said, “the international community should boycott the Burmese team from participating in the event.”

The UN’s special envoy to Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, is currently touring the country’s regional neighbors like Thailand and India to press them into using their influence with the military authorities. But Aung-Thwin said the UN Secretary General should not only send his envoy but also establish an engaged presence within the country in order to more effectively pressure the regime.

“And the U.S. should be less visible and more active,” she added. “It should take the lead in persuading the global community to put more political pressure on the military junta.”

Zarni, on the other hand, blamed oil companies, such as Chevron, for their continued business with the junta.

According to Aung-Thwin, U.S. sanctions prevent most American companies from working in Burma, but Chevron’s investment there existed before the sanctions were imposed and the company continues under a grandfather clause. Ultimately, Chevron is one of the few large Western companies left in the country.

The oil giant owns a minority stake — a little more than 28 percent — in the Yadana natural gas field and pipeline, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. Both China and India have been eager to do business with Burma, hoping to secure some of the fuel supplies that their surging economies need.

According to Human Rights Watch, an international watchdog and one of the groups applying pressure on Chevron, natural gas sales are the government’s single largest source of income, although economic data from Burma is nearly impossible to verify.

“The international community needs to pressure the Chevron executives and use all the leverage possible to pressure the junta,” Zarni said.

While the discussion yielded neither groundbreaking nor immediate solutions to the Burmese situation, the panelists conveyed to the assembled audience their support for the victims of oppression.