Burma's dictators may be willing "to turn a new page in relations with the international community." So said the United Nations' second-ranking official, Undersecretary General Ibrahim Gambari, speaking yesterday after his recent trip to that Southeast Asian nation. If he's right, great: Burma's 50 million people are among the most oppressed anywhere in the world. But don't pop the champagne corks yet.
The ruling junta has made many similar promises in the past, and it has yet to honor one. Maybe -- let's hope -- the generals will release democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi by Saturday, when her latest six-month term of house arrest is set to expire. That would be a good first step. But more than 1,100 of her supporters remain imprisoned on political charges, in terrible conditions, and she has been released before, only to be quickly reimprisoned. Altogether she has been detained for more than 10 of the past 17 years, though she and her National League for Democracy overwhelmingly won an election in 1990.
Meanwhile, the regime is waging a deliberate and brutal ethnic cleansing campaign against the people of the Karen nationality. The U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Burma, Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, and five other top U.N. officials issued a statement of alarm last Tuesday about the displacement of "thousands of ethnic minority villagers." It said that other reports from various sources "corroborate very serious allegations of unlawful killings, torture, rape and forced labor." According to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), more than half a million people in Burma are "internally displaced." The ongoing campaign has added at least 15,000 to that number.
Last year the world's nations, acting through the United Nations, promised to consider collective action if "national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations." Yet their response to Burma's brutalization of its own people has been lethargic. The Security Council has refused up to now even to endorse a resolution demanding political dialogue and the freeing of political prisoners. China and Russia haven't wanted to involve themselves; more surprisingly, neither has democratic Japan -- this despite the fact that the regime's corruption and misrule present an obvious threat to neighboring countries, in the spread of AIDS, heroin and refugees.
The irony here is that Burma ought to be an easy case. In some dictatorships, there seems to be no alternative to the regime. But in Burma, there is no question that the people support Aung San Suu Kyi -- a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, wedded to nonviolence, committed to peaceful dialogue with the nationalities that Burma's regime seeks to wipe out. The U.N. Security Council ought to welcome positive statements -- and demand positive action.