Southeast Asia's premier regional grouping turned on military-ruled member state Myanmar yesterday with its clearest call yet for the junta to free opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest.
The 10-member ASEAN, dispensing with its usual hands-off approach to its most awkward member, made the call in a statement from the grouping's current chairman, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
"We also called for the release of those placed under detention," Abdullah said in a written statement after an annual summit of ASEAN leaders, which included his Myanmar counterpart.
ASEAN has rapidly lost patience this year with a lack of progress in Myanmar's "roadmap to democracy," describing the issue as an embarrassment and a distraction. Myanmar is shunned by the West and is seen by Washington as an "outpost of tyranny."
The grouping pressured the junta at the weekend into accepting an ASEAN envoy to pay a planned visit to Suu Kyi, an extraordinary move by ASEAN's own gentle standards of diplomacy. She has been under house arrest since 2003.
ASEAN wants to clear a way through the Myanmar issue so it can focus on strengthening economic and political ties with the rest of the region -- a task it wants to kick off tomorrow with the first East Asian summit in the Malaysian capital.
"It must not be simple language," Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar told reporters, explaining that ASEAN had to see real progress on democracy in Myanmar. "There must be something that we can see and that we can feel."
Only hours earlier, the grouping had agreed to draft its first charter which could enshrine human rights and democracy. It also heard calls from a tandem summit of non-government bodies for a Southeast Asian human rights commission to be set up.
Amnesty International yesterday hailed Southeast Asian leaders for pressing Myanmar's government.
"We're very, very pleased to see the initiatives from ASEAN to bring pressure on Myanmar for change," said Purna Sen, Amnesty's regional director.
Sen said that all governments had to "ensure that flagrant violations do not continue in Myanmar."
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