With hardly a skip in their beat, Burma's military rulers have extended the detention of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and continued to talk of political reform, through a new constitution, in the same breath.
Over the weekend, the junta announced that Suu Kyi will not be freed from the house arrest she was placed in May 2003. The Nobel laureate, who heads the opposition National League of Democracy (NLD), has spent over 11 of the last 16 years in detention.
Amnesty International, the global human rights lobby, has condemned Rangoon's dictators over the continued arrest of Suu Kyi and other members of her party. ''The detention of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other political leaders, wrongfully imprisoned in Myanmar, is a travesty of justice,'' Amnesty said.
This decision by the generals, who have changed the country's name to Myanmar, comes just as Rangoon is trying to attract praise for resuming the next phase of a constitutional drafting process on Dec. 5.
But Suu Kyi and her NLD members are not the only ones being excluded from this political exercise in reform that the junta began in May last year. Early November, three leaders from the ethnic Shan community were given harsh prison sentences for their political activity in the Shan State, along the Burmese-Thai border.
Hkun Htun Oo, chairman of the Shan Nationalities League of Democracy (SNLD), was given a 93-year prison sentence, while his party colleagues Hso Ten was sentenced to 106 years in prison and Sai Nyunt Lwin to 85 years.
Jailing Hkun Htun Oo brings to 13 the number of parliamentarians the junta has thrown into prison following its refusal to recognise the results of the 1990 general elections. The NLD and other ethnic political parties like the SNLD defeated the military regime's party with a huge majority in the stakes for 485-member parliament.
''These jail sentences serve as a warning to other ethnic communities involved in the constitutional drafting process,'' Khuensai Jaiyen, editor of the Shan Herald Agency for News, said in an interview. ''They must toe the military regime's line or they would be treated the same way as the Shan leaders.''
For Burma's neighbours in South-east Asia, such hostile gestures could not have come at a worse time, especially when Rangoon is going ahead with plans for a National Convention to draft the constitution.
The Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN), a 10-member grouping, of which Burma is a member, has stood for regional solidarity and defended Burma despite growing condemnation from the United States and the European Union.
Malaysia, the current head of ASEAN, has announced that a December meeting of the regional body in Kuala Lumpur will focus on strengthening the economic agenda and integration of this bloc rather than discussing sensitive issues such as human rights, which would place Burma in the hot seat.
ASEAN's stance comes despite Burma being condemned in November by the U.N. General Assembly, for human rights violations ranging from torture, rape and forced labour to violation of political and civil liberties.
''The present situation will be really, really embarrassing for ASEAN, witnessing Burma take such action,'' Soe Aung, spokesperson for the National Council of the Union of Burma, a coalition of 30 pro-democracy Burman and non-Burman groups in exile, told IPS. ''Ignoring this issue will affect ASEAN's relationship with its (economic) dialogue partners, the U.S. and the EU.
What makes it worse for ASEAN is that the latest twist adds to other absurdities that have kept pace with Rangoon's desperate bid to wriggle out of its pariah status by saying that it is serious about political reform and it needs more time.
The opening act to this farce began when Gen. Khin Nyunt, newly appointed as Burmese prime minister in August 2003, revealed that the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the junta is officially known, had a seven-step plan towards democratic reform.
Reconvening the National Convention to draft a new constitution after a seven-year lapse of such an exercise was declared as the first step. Yet Khin Nyunt was arrested by the SPDC in October 2004, embarrassing ASEAN governments that had described him as 'moderate' and committed to genuine change.
When the first phase of the reconvened Convention began in May 2004, Rangoon's ideas about this political exercise were exposed.
While the over 1,000 representatives picked for the event were ones the junta favoured, on the other, the SPDC also introduced a law severely restricting open debate to shape the future constitution.
This law -- No 5/96 -- will be enforced when the constitutional convention opens next week, too. Under it, individual participants and political parties have been prohibited from criticising the Convention format shaped by the SPDC and it prevents participants from offering an alternative constitution to the one that the SPDC has already drafted.
Those who break this law during the Convention could face a prison term ranging from five to 20 years.
Little wonder that some of the participants from Burma's ethnic communities, who signed up to participate in this exercise, are having reservations after the convention process. ''The Mon community has been downgrading the level of their representation at the National Convention,'' Debbie Stothard of the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, a regional human rights watchdog, said in an interview.
The constitution being drafted is this county's third, since 1974. Burma has been ruled by oppressive military regimes since a coup in 1962.