POLITICS-BURMA: Opposition Seeks Tougher UN Action Against Junta

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 1 1998 (IPS) - Burma’s opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) is pushing for tougher U.N. action against the military regime in Rangoon if the junta refuses to allow the Burmese Parliament to convene.

Some 200 NLD members of parliament – and about 900 people in all – were arrested by the regime this week amid signs of a “disastrous confrontation” looming over any parliamentary session, Sein Win, an NLD leader who claims to be Burma’s legitimately elected prime minister, said Wednesday.

Sein Win – whose election, like those of other NLD members who swept 1990 elections, has never been recognised by the junta – argued that the U.N. General Assembly must go beyond condemning Burma’s rights violations to take action against it.

“It is no longer enough to be circumspect and vague about Burma’s plight,” Sein Win said. “If the United Nations does not signal its resolve by adopting a strong, action-oriented resolution, I believe the regime will continue to defy the United Nations as it has done for the past seven years and the situation in Burma will likely deteriorate dramatically.”

If the junta persists in its opposition to allowing the members of the 1990-elected Parliament to convene, he added, “the U.N. Security Council will have little choice but to impose full diplomatic and economic sanctions against the regime”.

The General Assembly, for seven consecutive years, has issued non-binding condemnations of the government of Burma (called Myanmar by its military rulers) and Thaung Htun, the opposition’s U.N. representative, said the pro-democracy movement was “a little disappointed” that the junta had ignored them without suffering any real consequence.

Arrests continued against democratic protestors, while the movements of the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, had been severely restricted, he noted. Even U.N. envoys sent to examine the country’s human rights record or talk to the junta, including Ambassador Razali Ismail of Malaysia, have been rebuffed, Thaung Htun said.

Now, the United Nations “should impose an arms embargo against the regime” – among other sanctions which could directly affect Rangoon, he said.

The United States already has passed legislation prohibiting new U.S. investments in Burma and the European Union and other parties have levied milder economic penalties against the regime in recent years. But many U.N. member states remained wary of taking further action on Burma’s dispute between its authoritarian military and democratic opposition, which is largely considered an internal matter.

“There are those who would like to use the United Nations to interfere in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of Myanmar,” Ohn Gyaw, Burma’s foreign minister, told the General Assembly Wednesday. “It is unfortunate that these proponents of a particular type of democracy would like to use the United Nations to interfere in our domestic political process.”

Ohn Gyaw contended that the government is trying to build “a genuine democratic state with a market-oriented economic system”, but would want that state to be “suitable to our tradition, our culture and our national ethos”.

Aung San Suu Kyi, however, countered in a Sep 17 radio address that her opposition forces this month have already been established as the government of Burma, and she asked for its international recognition as the Committee Representing the People’s Parliament.

“I appeal to all the democratically elected Parliaments of the world to give due recognition to our committee and to support the work we are undertaking,” she said. “The problems of the country today can only be resolved when democracy comes to Burma.”

Neither the General Assembly nor the Security Council indicated any willingness to legitimise the NLD as the Burmese government or to withdraw recognition from the junta, which first came to power in 1962. Still, the growing crackdown on demonstrators gave the opposition some hope that action could be forthcoming.

The U.S. Department of Labour is adding to the pressures on the regime, having issued a report on Sep 25 that detailed significant labour abuses in Burma, including forced labour, military conscription of children and trafficking of women and children into prostitution.

The dismal rights picture in Burma has prompted many conglomerates to cut their ties with Rangoon, leaving two oil companies – the US-based UNOCAL and France’s Total – as the major Western firms still working there.