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By Benedict Rogers
Right, that’s it. The brutal military regime that terrorises
Gambari’s latest visit is the 35th such visit by a UN envoy - accompanied by 31 UN General Assembly and UN Human Rights Council resolutions. Yet still Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, remains under house arrest - in her 12th year in detention. She led her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), to victory in the 1990 elections, winning over 80% of the parliamentary seats. Yet 18 years later, those elected in 1990 are in jail or in exile, and the regime refuses to even talk to them, let alone recognise their mandate. This is a brutal, illegal, Orwellian regime which should be swept from power.
The world should not for one fraction of a second be fooled by its proposed constitution, referendum and so-called elections to be held in 2010. No one has yet seen the full draft constitution, which makes the May referendum questionable for that very reason, but we know that it includes provisions that would emphatically exclude Aung San Suu Kyi from contesting high office, and we know that it is designed to enshrine the military in power. It is a total, complete, one hundred per cent sham, and the whole world should say so.
But this is a regime that not only disregards UN resolutions and envoys, Nobel Laureates and election results. It is a regime that is guilty of every possible human rights violation you could think of. The widespread, systematic use of rape as a weapon of war; forced labour; the forcible conscription of child soldiers; the destruction of over 3,000 villages in eastern Burma alone since 1996; land confiscation; the deliberate targeting and killing of civilians; the use of people as human minesweepers; the forcible displacement of over a million people, forced to flee the Burma Army and run into the jungles - without food, medicine or shelter. It is a regime that has created a humanitarian crisis. It is a regime that spends almost 50% of its budget on the military, despite having no external enemies, but spends less than 50p per person per year on health and education combined. It is a regime that persecutes ethnic and religious minorities savegely, but does not hesitate to crush Burman Buddhists who stand up against it. As we saw last September, when the monks and civilians courageously stood up against this regime, they were met with bullets and batons. The streets ran with blood as soldiers bashed the heads of monks on the concrete, or simply shot them as they fled.
These are not simply statistics. These are human beings. Some of those who have died are friends of mine. On 14 February, for example, the regime’s agents assassinated the General Secretary of the Karen National Union (KNU), Padoh Mahn Sha Lah Phan. He was someone I am honoured to call a friend. His daughters are good friends of mine too. One of his daughters, Zoya, has spoken twice at Conservative Party Conferences. I was with him for half a day, just three days before he was shot dead. I stood on the veranda of his home in
The list of horrors could go on. But more important than continuing to describe the situation is to answer the question: what do we do now? Gambari has failed. The regime won’t talk. So it is time, surely now, to act with more clarity and guts than ever before. It is time for the EU to impose targeted banking and financial sanctions that will hit the Generals and their cronies hard. It is time for the UN Security Council to impose a universal arms embargo. It is time for China, India, Russia and the Association of South-East Asian Nations to come under such intense pressure from the EU, the US and UN to use their muscle with the regime that if they refuse to do so, their lives will not be worth living.
Ask yourself the question which I saw written on a banner in a bamboo hut in the jungle in eastern
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Mar 9th, 2008 by admin
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