Today [19 June] is Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's 61st birthday. Once again, the leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD), will wake trapped in her own home with only the company of her radio, and by all accounts, not in the best of health.
Like Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's people, too, are trapped and not in the best of health. The military regime's severe oppression and misgovernance that ails Burma is worsening and threatening the entire region.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) publicly committed itself to the principles of comprehensive security in the 2003 Bali Concord II. The Concord acknowledges the fundamental linkage between good governance with traditional and non-traditional models of security. It is time for ASEAN leaders to fulfil that commitment and act to address the threat that the military regime in Burma poses to us all.
Unfortunately, informal talks about the spill-over effects of Burma's problems, the favored approach of ASEAN to address such problems, have proved insufficient. In the past year, the military regime of Burma led by Senior General Than Shwe, has increasingly shown its contempt for ASEAN and its regional partners. Only recent moves to take Burma to the UN
Security Council have sparked any positive reaction at all from the Senior General's State Peace and Development Council (SPDC).
This is proof the UN Security Council represents our "final frontier" in ensuring that genuine political and economic reforms take place in Burma that will, in turn, improve regional security.
When Burma joined ASEAN in 1997, the Burmese authorities assured us that it was engaged in a "step-by-step" process to achieve democracy. Such "roadmap" initiatives have been an opportunity for the regime to issue assurances to the international community of "progress", whilst simultaneously marching backwards on genuine political and economic reforms.
Besides rounding up hundreds more of political prisoners, more ethnic leaders and MPs have been sentenced to lengthy jail terms in the past year. Shan State Peace Council Chairman (SSPC) Gen Hso Ten was sentenced to 106 years in jail; Shan Nationalities League for Democracy Chair and MP Hkun Tun Oo was sentenced to 76 years. Rohingya MP-elect U Kyaw Min was sentenced to 47 years in prison while his wife and children each received 17-year prison terms.
It is only right that the NLD has refused to engage in the "roadmap" initiatives of the regime until the commencement of political dialogue. The bitter lessons learnt by the NLD and ethnic political parties from their previous participation in such processes prove that engagement would be futile without prior political dialogue based on the fundamental principles
of democracy and human rights.
Burma's military has continued its campaign of terror against the
country's ethnic nationality groups. There are an estimated 540,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Eastern Burma alone; the current assault on ethnic Karen has displaced 18,000 since November. In Western Burma, the SPDC has targeted ethnic Muslim Rohingyas. Meanwhile, UN statistics conservatively estimate that there are 688,500 Burma's refugees
in Thailand, Bangladesh, India and Malaysia.
Burma's military regime is guilty of perpetrating egregious human rights violations - extrajudicial killings, torture, disappearances, arbitrary detention, land confiscation and forced relocation are widespread. So is forcing civilians to serve as military porters, to act as human mine sweepers, and to work on infrastructure projects. Burma is notorious for
having an estimated 70,000 child soldiers the largest number in the world and for systematically using rape as a weapon of war.
It is a well-known fact that Burma is the world's number two producer of opium and heroin. A lesser-known fact is that Burma is Southeast Asia's largest producer of amphetamine type stimulants (ATS). It is clear that the SPDC has contributed directly and indirectly to conditions that have allowed drug production and trafficking to thrive.
SPDC policies that restrict public health and humanitarian aid have created an environment where AIDS, drug-resistant tuberculosis, filariasis, malaria and avian flu (H5N1) are spreading unchecked, and new disease strains are
being incubated. Given this dismal scenario, Myanmar could very well become the epicenter for the avian flu pandemic. In the meantime HIV/AIDS, TB, and drug-resistant malaria pose a current and serious public health issues for all of us.
The regime is one of the key contributors to Burma's humanitarian crisis through military operations against ethnic civilians, general neglect of the national population and serious economic mismanagement. The capricious move of Burma's capital to a military stronghold has further bankrupted the population, making tens of thousands more vulnerable to human trafficking, economic exploitation and poverty-related disease.
ASEAN has had to expend considerable amounts of political capital in defending our recalcitrant neighbor. ASEAN's diplomatic, political and economic influence has become a hostage to the Burma's regime's misrule and misbehavior. It is intolerable that ASEAN is compelled to defend the same misbehavior that continues to adversely affect regional economic and political stability.
I believe our ASEAN leaders are well aware of the security dimensions of Burma's oppression but are afraid that taking a public stand may provoke a worse reaction from the regime, causing more problems for "frontline" states bordering the country. This short-sighted approach only serves to
prolong and worsen the problem. Just as the Burmese regime has failed to deliver on long-standing promises of reforms, ASEAN's dithering is flouting commitments made through the ASEAN Security Community Plan of Action.
In absence of political will in ASEAN, I and my other colleagues in the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus (AIPMC) believe that the most effective approach to restoring democracy in Burma is through action by the UN Security Council. We are not calling for military intervention but we do believe that a formal resolution with enforceable measures, followed by
firm and leveraged diplomacy will deliver the results that the people of Burma and this region so urgently need.