Burma Update
News and updates on Burma30 September 2005
Myanmar is holding more than 1,100 political prisoners: investigator
scmp - Thursday, September 29, 2005
ASSOCIATED PRESS at the United Nations
Updated at 11.09am:
Myanmar’s military junta is holding more than 1,100 political prisoners and allegedly uses torture on a routine basis and continues to harass pro-democracy activists, a UN human rights investigator said in a report overnight (HK time).
Paulo Sergio Pinheiro said serious human rights violations also continue to be perpetrated against Myanmar’s ethnic minorities, citing widespread reports of forced labor, rape and other sexual violence, extortion and expropriation by government forces.
In the report to the UN General Assembly, he expressed serious concern about the continued house arrest of pro-democracy activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, saying her virtual solitary confinement and lack of access to colleagues from her National League for Democracy political party “run counter to the spirit of national reconciliation”.
Fearing her popularity, the military has detained Ms Suu Kyi repeatedly, most recently in 2003.
Despite the welcome release of 249 political prisoners on July 6, Mr Pinheiro said “there reportedly remain over 1,100 political prisoners in Myanmar, including monks, lawyers, teachers, journalists, farmers, politicians, student leaders, writers and poets”.
He expressed disappointment that U Win Tin, a 75-year-old editor and poet imprisoned for 16 years, had been told on July 6 of his imminent release but remains in Insein prison.
The continued detention of political prisoners runs counter to the spirit and objective of the military junta’s 2003 road map for the transition to democracy, Mr Pinheiro said.
Officials at Myanmar’s UN mission weren’t available for comment.
The military junta seized power in 1988 and called elections in 1990 but refused to hand over office when Ms Suu Kyi’s party won overwhelmingly. Last year, it called a national convention to set guidelines for a new constitution as part of a process to eventually hold free elections but Ms Suu Kyi was not allowed to participate and her party boycotted the convention.
Mr Pinheiro warned that if representatives of the democratic opposition aren’t involved in the national convention, “any constitution that emerges will lack credibility.”
The government should take immediate steps to include all political parties “to salvage the national convention and its credibility both at home and internationally,” he said.
“The transition to a full, participatory and democratic system in Myanmar can no longer be postponed,” Mr Pinheiro said. “Political and constitutional dialogue must begin without delay.”
At the moment, however, he said “civilians, including members of registered political parties and pro-democracy activists, continue to be harassed, arrested, tried and sentenced to prison for the peaceful exercise of basic civil and political rights and freedoms.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS at the United Nations
Updated at 11.09am:
Myanmar’s military junta is holding more than 1,100 political prisoners and allegedly uses torture on a routine basis and continues to harass pro-democracy activists, a UN human rights investigator said in a report overnight (HK time).
Paulo Sergio Pinheiro said serious human rights violations also continue to be perpetrated against Myanmar’s ethnic minorities, citing widespread reports of forced labor, rape and other sexual violence, extortion and expropriation by government forces.
In the report to the UN General Assembly, he expressed serious concern about the continued house arrest of pro-democracy activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, saying her virtual solitary confinement and lack of access to colleagues from her National League for Democracy political party “run counter to the spirit of national reconciliation”.
Fearing her popularity, the military has detained Ms Suu Kyi repeatedly, most recently in 2003.
Despite the welcome release of 249 political prisoners on July 6, Mr Pinheiro said “there reportedly remain over 1,100 political prisoners in Myanmar, including monks, lawyers, teachers, journalists, farmers, politicians, student leaders, writers and poets”.
He expressed disappointment that U Win Tin, a 75-year-old editor and poet imprisoned for 16 years, had been told on July 6 of his imminent release but remains in Insein prison.
The continued detention of political prisoners runs counter to the spirit and objective of the military junta’s 2003 road map for the transition to democracy, Mr Pinheiro said.
Officials at Myanmar’s UN mission weren’t available for comment.
The military junta seized power in 1988 and called elections in 1990 but refused to hand over office when Ms Suu Kyi’s party won overwhelmingly. Last year, it called a national convention to set guidelines for a new constitution as part of a process to eventually hold free elections but Ms Suu Kyi was not allowed to participate and her party boycotted the convention.
Mr Pinheiro warned that if representatives of the democratic opposition aren’t involved in the national convention, “any constitution that emerges will lack credibility.”
The government should take immediate steps to include all political parties “to salvage the national convention and its credibility both at home and internationally,” he said.
“The transition to a full, participatory and democratic system in Myanmar can no longer be postponed,” Mr Pinheiro said. “Political and constitutional dialogue must begin without delay.”
At the moment, however, he said “civilians, including members of registered political parties and pro-democracy activists, continue to be harassed, arrested, tried and sentenced to prison for the peaceful exercise of basic civil and political rights and freedoms.”
24 September 2005
Concern at support for Myanmar
scmp - Friday, September 23, 2005
ASSOCIATED PRESS in Washington
China's actions in Southeast Asia are often at odds with the United States, most strikingly in its support of Myanmar's military dictatorship, according to a US State Department official.
Eric John, a top Asian specialist in the State Department, told a US Congressional hearing on Southeast Asia that China's focus in the region appeared to be primarily economic, noting its trade with the 10 countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations jumped 30 per cent last year.
But he said there were concerns that as China pursued its business interests, it was also increasing its political influence in the region. Several US lawmakers expressed concern about what they considered China's increasing military and economic support of the generals running Myanmar.
ASSOCIATED PRESS in Washington
China's actions in Southeast Asia are often at odds with the United States, most strikingly in its support of Myanmar's military dictatorship, according to a US State Department official.
Eric John, a top Asian specialist in the State Department, told a US Congressional hearing on Southeast Asia that China's focus in the region appeared to be primarily economic, noting its trade with the 10 countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations jumped 30 per cent last year.
But he said there were concerns that as China pursued its business interests, it was also increasing its political influence in the region. Several US lawmakers expressed concern about what they considered China's increasing military and economic support of the generals running Myanmar.
06 September 2005
A better Burma no nearer
The country'sdecision to cede its 2006 ASEAN chairmanship may have averted an internationalpolitical crisis but it also took the heat off the question ofdomestic reform, writes Amitav Acharya
Monday, September 05, 2005
The country'sdecision to cede its 2006 ASEAN chairmanship may have averted an internationalpolitical crisis but it also took the heat off the question ofdomestic reform, writes Amitav Acharya
A July 2005 agreement among the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that Burma would relinquish its turn at the chairmanship has averted a major diplomatic crisis for the organization.
Western nations, including the United States and the European Union, who attend the annual ASEAN meetings as "dialogue partners," had threatened to boycott the 2006 meeting if Burma was in the chair.
Founded in 1967, ASEAN now includes 10 Southeast Asian countries. Under its rotational leadership, Burma, which joined the group in 1997, was due to assume the chairmanship of its Standing Committee in 2006.
The Western dialogue partners of ASEAN are protesting against continued political repression and human rights abuses by the Burmese regime, which has ruled the country since 1962. The regime has refused to accept the result of the 1990 national election, which was won by the opposition National League for Democracy. The party leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has since spent most of her time under detention.
By giving up its claim to lead ASEAN in 2006, the junta managed to take the heat off the question of domestic reform, and avoided a Western boycott of its 2006 meeting. But without more focused action by ASEAN and the international community to move Burma towards democracy, the move will be little more than ASEAN's traditional practice of sweeping problems under the carpet.
The discussion in Laos was not about how to improve the political situation in the country. The issue was Burma's leadership, rather than membership in ASEAN, which has not made Burma's continued membership of the association subject to political reform.
ASEAN has been reluctant to push the country towards political reform out of deference to its doctrine of non- interference.
The Burmese junta has started drafting a new constitution, due to be completed in 2007, which it says will lead to political liberalization. Presumably, this would make Burma eligible to assume the leadership in ASEAN.
ASEAN members agree, and hope that this will be the case, but its Western partners dismiss the constitution-drafting process. Suu Kyi and her party have boycotted the National Convention drafting the constitution, whose delegates were hand-picked and tightly controlled by the junta. The Bush administration in May 2004 stated that because "Rangoon's constitutional convention has not allowed for substantive dialogue and the full participation of all political groups, including the NLD, it lacks legitimacy."
If approved by a popular majority in the electorate in a free and fair referendum - which is by no means guaranteed - the constitution would still accord the military a privileged position in the political system, including sole claim to the presidency.
ASEAN's role in Burma has been very different from its role in the Cambodia conflict during the 1980s, when it led efforts to find a peaceful settlement to the dispute, which resulted in the Paris Peace Agreement in 1991. That conflict was originally a civil war, although it had been internationalized by Vietnamese intervention and occupation of Cambodia. There has been no outside intervention in Burma, which is one justification for ASEAN's hands- off policy. But Burma has proven to be a major embarrassment for ASEAN.
ASEAN's diplomatic options in dealing with Burma are limited by intra- mural differences within the grouping over how to deal with the junta. Some members - Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore - are increasingly concerned about the group's relationship with Western nations, if not its international public reputation per se. These ASEAN countries want to see the association play a role in nudging the junta to reform.
Others, like Vietnam, stick to the principle of non-interference, and are worried about setting a precedent of allowing regionalist pressure for domestic political reform a precedent that would likely come back to haunt them.
ASEAN's capacity for inducing political reform in Burma is also constrained by the fact that the junta has secured backing from both China and India, its two most powerful neighbors, playing them against one other. The junta can ignore any demand for political change that ASEAN may bring to bear on it.
China and India are critical of any intervention by the international community in Burma. But is the West really interested in advancing political change in the country? There is no serious ongoing diplomatic effort of the kind one finds in Sri Lanka or Aceh that might help bring about political reconciliation.
The Bush administration snubbed ASEAN by canceling US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's attendance at the Vientiane meeting. But this posturing was almost entirely cost-free, thanks to good bilateral relations with key Asian nations, as indicated by a separate Rice stopover in Bangkok before the Vientiane meeting. Diplomatic snubs and economic sanctions are no substitute for a policy of seeking a solution to Burma's political woes.
Its strategic location or economic potential may be apparent to India and China, but not to the United States. Burma is not regarded by the Bush administration as a terrorist haven, although it claims to side with the United States on the war on terror, supposedly against extremist elements among its Rohingya Muslim minority.
When asked by the author why the United States is not actively seeking a role in the Burma problem, a senior official in the first Bush administration replied that it is because there is no significant domestic interest or constituency in the United States pushing for such a role. The administration's democracy-promotion agenda does not extend to Burma, despite the fact that Rice named it as one of six "outposts of tyranny" during her Senate confirmation hearing in January.
Yet a diplomatic effort backed by the United States and involving Burma's giant Asian neighbors would be necessary and timely. Denying Burma the chairmanship of ASEAN is good posturing, but it does not advance the cause of democratic transformation in the country.
If the United States can engage in six-party negotiations involving China, Japan, Russia and South Korea to deal with the North Korea problem, why should it not encourage a similar move involving China, India and ASEAN to deal with the Burma issue?
The international community needs to prove that, while taking a moral high ground on Burma's crisis, it will also offer concrete ideas and approaches to advance the democratization and national reconciliation process beyond the current policy of sanctions and boycott.
A necessary step in that direction would be a new diplomatic initiative to persuade the Rangoon regime to broaden the constitution-drafting process with the participation of freed opposition leaders, and a firm timetable for internationally supervised elections.
Such an initiative could be spearheaded jointly by ASEAN, China and India, with the backing of the United States, the EU and other members of the international community. ASEAN must come out of its non-interference closet and address the issue head on. Otherwise, its hands-off approach will continue to cloud its legitimacy and credibility as a regional organization with a mandate for seeking "regional solutions to regional problems."
Amitav Acharya is deputy director and head of research at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Nanyang Technological University.
Reprinted with permission from Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, www.yaleglobal.yale.edu
Monday, September 05, 2005
The country'sdecision to cede its 2006 ASEAN chairmanship may have averted an internationalpolitical crisis but it also took the heat off the question ofdomestic reform, writes Amitav Acharya
A July 2005 agreement among the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that Burma would relinquish its turn at the chairmanship has averted a major diplomatic crisis for the organization.
Western nations, including the United States and the European Union, who attend the annual ASEAN meetings as "dialogue partners," had threatened to boycott the 2006 meeting if Burma was in the chair.
Founded in 1967, ASEAN now includes 10 Southeast Asian countries. Under its rotational leadership, Burma, which joined the group in 1997, was due to assume the chairmanship of its Standing Committee in 2006.
The Western dialogue partners of ASEAN are protesting against continued political repression and human rights abuses by the Burmese regime, which has ruled the country since 1962. The regime has refused to accept the result of the 1990 national election, which was won by the opposition National League for Democracy. The party leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has since spent most of her time under detention.
By giving up its claim to lead ASEAN in 2006, the junta managed to take the heat off the question of domestic reform, and avoided a Western boycott of its 2006 meeting. But without more focused action by ASEAN and the international community to move Burma towards democracy, the move will be little more than ASEAN's traditional practice of sweeping problems under the carpet.
The discussion in Laos was not about how to improve the political situation in the country. The issue was Burma's leadership, rather than membership in ASEAN, which has not made Burma's continued membership of the association subject to political reform.
ASEAN has been reluctant to push the country towards political reform out of deference to its doctrine of non- interference.
The Burmese junta has started drafting a new constitution, due to be completed in 2007, which it says will lead to political liberalization. Presumably, this would make Burma eligible to assume the leadership in ASEAN.
ASEAN members agree, and hope that this will be the case, but its Western partners dismiss the constitution-drafting process. Suu Kyi and her party have boycotted the National Convention drafting the constitution, whose delegates were hand-picked and tightly controlled by the junta. The Bush administration in May 2004 stated that because "Rangoon's constitutional convention has not allowed for substantive dialogue and the full participation of all political groups, including the NLD, it lacks legitimacy."
If approved by a popular majority in the electorate in a free and fair referendum - which is by no means guaranteed - the constitution would still accord the military a privileged position in the political system, including sole claim to the presidency.
ASEAN's role in Burma has been very different from its role in the Cambodia conflict during the 1980s, when it led efforts to find a peaceful settlement to the dispute, which resulted in the Paris Peace Agreement in 1991. That conflict was originally a civil war, although it had been internationalized by Vietnamese intervention and occupation of Cambodia. There has been no outside intervention in Burma, which is one justification for ASEAN's hands- off policy. But Burma has proven to be a major embarrassment for ASEAN.
ASEAN's diplomatic options in dealing with Burma are limited by intra- mural differences within the grouping over how to deal with the junta. Some members - Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore - are increasingly concerned about the group's relationship with Western nations, if not its international public reputation per se. These ASEAN countries want to see the association play a role in nudging the junta to reform.
Others, like Vietnam, stick to the principle of non-interference, and are worried about setting a precedent of allowing regionalist pressure for domestic political reform a precedent that would likely come back to haunt them.
ASEAN's capacity for inducing political reform in Burma is also constrained by the fact that the junta has secured backing from both China and India, its two most powerful neighbors, playing them against one other. The junta can ignore any demand for political change that ASEAN may bring to bear on it.
China and India are critical of any intervention by the international community in Burma. But is the West really interested in advancing political change in the country? There is no serious ongoing diplomatic effort of the kind one finds in Sri Lanka or Aceh that might help bring about political reconciliation.
The Bush administration snubbed ASEAN by canceling US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's attendance at the Vientiane meeting. But this posturing was almost entirely cost-free, thanks to good bilateral relations with key Asian nations, as indicated by a separate Rice stopover in Bangkok before the Vientiane meeting. Diplomatic snubs and economic sanctions are no substitute for a policy of seeking a solution to Burma's political woes.
Its strategic location or economic potential may be apparent to India and China, but not to the United States. Burma is not regarded by the Bush administration as a terrorist haven, although it claims to side with the United States on the war on terror, supposedly against extremist elements among its Rohingya Muslim minority.
When asked by the author why the United States is not actively seeking a role in the Burma problem, a senior official in the first Bush administration replied that it is because there is no significant domestic interest or constituency in the United States pushing for such a role. The administration's democracy-promotion agenda does not extend to Burma, despite the fact that Rice named it as one of six "outposts of tyranny" during her Senate confirmation hearing in January.
Yet a diplomatic effort backed by the United States and involving Burma's giant Asian neighbors would be necessary and timely. Denying Burma the chairmanship of ASEAN is good posturing, but it does not advance the cause of democratic transformation in the country.
If the United States can engage in six-party negotiations involving China, Japan, Russia and South Korea to deal with the North Korea problem, why should it not encourage a similar move involving China, India and ASEAN to deal with the Burma issue?
The international community needs to prove that, while taking a moral high ground on Burma's crisis, it will also offer concrete ideas and approaches to advance the democratization and national reconciliation process beyond the current policy of sanctions and boycott.
A necessary step in that direction would be a new diplomatic initiative to persuade the Rangoon regime to broaden the constitution-drafting process with the participation of freed opposition leaders, and a firm timetable for internationally supervised elections.
Such an initiative could be spearheaded jointly by ASEAN, China and India, with the backing of the United States, the EU and other members of the international community. ASEAN must come out of its non-interference closet and address the issue head on. Otherwise, its hands-off approach will continue to cloud its legitimacy and credibility as a regional organization with a mandate for seeking "regional solutions to regional problems."
Amitav Acharya is deputy director and head of research at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Nanyang Technological University.
Reprinted with permission from Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, www.yaleglobal.yale.edu
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