Foreign ministers from key nations warned Myanmar’s military junta on Monday that the release of political prisoners — including detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi — is “essential” for upcoming elections to be seen as credible, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said.
Ban said after a closed-door meeting that the ministers reiterated the need for the election process “to be more inclusive, participatory and transparent.”
There was no representative from Myanmar at the gathering and no immediate response from the government.
The Nov. 7 elections will be Myanmar’s first in two decades. They are part of the junta’s long-announced “roadmap to democracy,” which critics deride as a sham designed to cement nearly 50 years of military rule.
Suu Kyi’s disbanded National League for Democracy party marked what would be its 22nd anniversary on Monday under tight surveillance.
The junta dissolved the party earlier this year after it decided to boycott the election.
Ban said the ministers stressed that it was “essential for the election to be seen as credible and to contribute to Myanmar’s stability and development.
“The group further reiterated its commitment to work together to help Myanmar address its political, humanitarian and development challenges in parallel with equal attention,” the UN chief said, adding that the ministers were unified “in calling on Myanmar to make further efforts towards national reconciliation and democracy.”
Ban met senior officials from Myanmar during the current ministerial session and said he would “continue my dialogue” in Hanoi at the upcoming ASEAN summit.
The so-called Friends on Myanmar group that met on Monday includes about 15 countries, including Myanmar’s neighbors, interested Asian and European nations, and the five permanent UN Security Council members: the US, Russia, China, Britain and France.
Ban said the group agreed that the run-up to the election “will be critical for Myanmar” and expressed “their encouragement, concerns and expectations.”
Hours before the meeting, US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt. Campbell told reporters on a conference call that Washington was “disappointed by the steps that the government has taken in advance of the upcoming election.”
“There is no sign that there will be legitimacy associated with this process,” said Campbell, who represented the US at the meeting. “Recent reports that balloting will be deeply restricted in ethnic areas is worrisome.”
“All that being said, we also recognize that after the election there may be a different correlation of players, different relationships, different actors that may emerge that could create the opportunity for some sort of engagement that would advance not only American interests, but the interests of others in the region and the dispossessed in the country as a whole,” he said.
Suu Kyi co-founded the now-disbanded political party amid massive pro-democracy protests in August 1988 and officially registered it on Sept. 27, 1988, after the demonstrations were violently suppressed by the junta.
The party won 1990 elections by a landslide, but the results were not recognized by the military, which took power in 1962. Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate, has been jailed or under house arrest for 15 of the past 21 years.
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