Veteran Myanmar dissidents yesterday urged the ASEAN bloc of Southeast Asian nations to suspend the regime if its military rulers continue to refuse international demands for reform.
In a letter to Prime Minister Lee Hsieng Loong and Foreign Minister George Yeo of Singapore, which currently chairs ASEAN, leaders of the 88 Generation Students group urged the bloc to push the junta into talks with the opposition.
The group said Myanmar's generals must be pressured to release people who were detained after a crackdown on September's mass anti-government protests.
Officially, about 3,000 people were arrested when the junta suppressed the largest demonstrations in 20 years with the loss of 13 lives, although the real numbers are thought to be higher.
"We would request ASEAN to ... consider suspending [Myanmar's] membership in ASEAN if it continues ignoring the requests of the international community," the group wrote.
The 88 Generation group is made up of veterans of the 1988 democracy uprising that ended in bloodshed when soldiers sprayed thousands of protesters with bullets in front of Yangon's City Hall. More than 3,000 people were killed.
ASEAN has come under intense pressure to deal with Myanmar, its most unruly member.
In the past, the grouping has been reluctant to address criticism of the regime, citing a policy of not interfering in the internal matters of its members.
Meanwhile, UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari will return to Myanmar tomorrow to promote talks between the government and the opposition and to press for the release of all those detained after September's crackdown, the UN chief said.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday that he would meet Gambari in Istanbul, Turkey, this morning to discuss strategies and stressed that the UN envoy's upcoming visit "will have to bring substantively different results."
Ban sent Gambari to Myanmar after the government crackdown on peaceful protesters in late September and he met early last month with junta leader Senior General Than Shwe. He also met twice with detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Soon after he left, the government appointed retired Major General Aung Kyi as liaison minister for talks with Suu Kyi, under a UN-brokered attempt by Gambari to nudge her and the military junta toward reconciliation. They met last week, which Gambari welcomed, but he called it "only the first step," saying it "should lead to early resumption of talks that will lead to tangible results."
Ban told reporters Wednesday: "Our goal is that he will facilitate this dialogue between the government and opposition leaders, and do more -- the democratic measures by the Myanmar government including the release of all detained students and demonstrators and open up their society as soon as possible."
Gambari has been on a six-nation Asian tour, discussing the situation in Myanmar and urging support from key countries for national reconciliation and a stepped-up transition to democracy in the military-ruled country.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS