A UN envoy arrived in military-ruled Myanmar yesterday to examine its progress on human rights ahead of elections, days after the junta freed a key aide to democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.
Tomas Ojea Quintana expects to meet Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win but not reclusive junta head Than Shwe during his five-day trip, the third he has made to the isolated Southeast Asian nation since his appointment in 2008.
Quintana has said he also wants to meet Nobel Peace laureate Suu Kyi, who has been detained for most of the past 20 years, but the ruling generals have not said if they will allow the Argentine diplomat to do so.
He arrived by commercial flight at Yangon airport and was taken to his hotel before meeting with UN staff, a Myanmar official said on condition of anonymity.
The junta has so far agreed to a meeting between Quintana and four lawyers from Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), said an official and NLD party spokesman, also called Nyan Win.
“We four lawyers will meet with Mr Quintana this evening ... We do not know the reason. It’s their proposal. I still do not know yet whether the envoy will meet with the NLD party,” Nyan Win said.
Suu Kyi remains under house arrest in Yangon, but the junta on Saturday freed Tin Oo, the elderly vice chairman of NLD who had been detained for the past seven years.
In a statement issued last week ahead of his five-day visit, Quintana said this year was “a critical time for the people of Myanmar.”
“It would be important for me to meet with political party leaders in the context of this year’s landmark elections,” he said. “I hope that my request to the government to meet with ... Aung San Suu Kyi will be granted this time.”
Myanmar officials said Quintana would go outside the former capital Yangon yesterday and fly to Sittwe, in Western Rakhine state, near the country’s border with Bangladesh.
Quintana had meant to visit Myanmar back in November, but his visit was repeatedly pushed back. He was appointed to his human rights role in May 2008 in the wake of a cyclone that left around 138,000 people dead.
On Thursday the envoy is due to return to Yangon to visit the country’s notorious Insein prison where dozens of political dissidents are held, and later meet with representatives of ethnic groups.
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