Fears Aung San Suu Kyi will starve to death

1. DISSIDENTS from Burma fear that opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will starve herself to death.They said yesterday the Nobel Peace Laureate was definitely on a hunger strike and refusing food rations from Burma's ruling military junta as well as rescue packages from concerned supporters.
   National League for Democracy figures and exiled student leaders who have arrived on the Thai-Burma border from Rangoon this week have flagged their deep concern about Ms Suu Kyi's health.
   "She is very weak. We don't know what is going to happen at this stage," said one student leader.
   Asked if he thought Ms Suu Kyi might kill herself, he replied: "We really don't know, but she is getting weaker and it doesn't look good."
   A senior Karen National Liberation Army figure said Ms Suu Kyi's opportunity to play any role in the country's future was diminishing.
   "I would say she has no future role," said Colonel Nerdah Mya, son of the venerated General Bo Mya, who died in 2006.
   "I think she will die in jail, under house arrest," he said during an interview inside Burma surrounded by bodyguards.
   Colonel Nerdah, who has a junta-sponsored bounty on his head, conceded it would be a blow for all Burmese opposition groups if Ms Suu Kyi died.
   But should the situation change in Burma and free and fair elections be held, he said he felt she could lead the country.
   Colonel Nerdah said anyone could become president if they were the people's choice.
   "Anyone who wants to be president must be elected, anyone who wants to be a member of parliament must be elected," he said.
   "But until we get rid of the SPDC (the ruling military junta) then everything we are talking about here is just a dream. There's no point," he said.
   Ms Suu Kyi is said to have refused food for almost four weeks now, but Burma's police chief, Khin Yee, has dismissed such claims.
   The revered opposition leader won general elections in 1990 but the country's military rulers annulled the result and prevented her from assuming power.
   Her father, General Aung San, is considered to be the father of modern-day Burma.
   She has been under house arrest since 2003

Commentary: Burma must stand on its own two feet

The Burmese opposition and pro-democracy forces have lost faith in the good offices of the United Nations after Gambari's latest futile mission and its exploitation by the military regime.
Burma's key opposition party, the National League for Democracy, spoke out against UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari, stating that his mission to Burma has failed to accomplish anything. People will not rely on the UN as a trustworthy body if they become too accustomed to hearing nothing but rhetoric.
On 29 August, the NLD released a statement criticising the six-day mission of Gambari to Burma from 18 to 23 August. The party states that Gambari has a mandate to realise the resolutions passed by the UN General Assembly between 1994 and 2007, namely “the implementation of the 1990 election results, the establishment of a democratic Burma, the inauguration of meaningful political dialogue and the release of all political prisoners including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi”. The statement also says that the recent mission of the UN special envoy has not brought about any tangible political improvement.
It is clear that Gambari's recent mission to resolve the political impasse between the military junta and detained opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi seems to be slowing to a complete standstill. His efforts to create reconciliation talks between the junta and the opposition have fallen apart.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the key stakeholder in the Burma issue, refused to see Gambari during his six-day trip, although he met her on his previous visits. However, the special envoy also failed to meet the senior general or vice-senior general of the country's ruling junta, the State Peace and Development Council. Gambari’s total failure to accomplish anything at all during this fourth visit now raises grave uncertainties about the future of his mission and about the UN's arbitration efforts in Burma as a whole.
It is not clear that why Gambari, as a special envoy of the UN, did not follow his own agenda during his fourth trip. It was shameful to see how he danced to the SPDC's tune – meeting scores of people chosen by the junta to converse with him – but could not persuade the regime to grant him meetings with any of the regime’s decision makers. Senior General Than Shwe – who hides entrenched in the new capital Naypyidaw some 400 kilometers north of Rangoon – has been using Gambari as a pawn in his time-buying game.
Than Shwe has continued to be too pigheaded to accept the dialogue process and refuses to meet anyone who raises the issue of reconciliation talks with the Lady, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Although Gambari sought a meeting with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, he was unable to fulfil his mission as a result of following the junta's schedule. Instead he met only with puppet ministers who have no authoritative power and dishonest pro-junta agents who have no real role in politics.
The UN envoy originally planned to meet the Lady at the State Guesthouse in a meeting organised by the junta for 20 August, but she did not show up. Obviously, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi did not want Mr Gambari to overplay the impression that his mission was gradually improving. Many people also take the Lady's refusal to meet the special envoy as a signal to the nation not to depend too much on international intervention. It was a call to fellow citizens to stand up in unity on their own feet.
However, the junta's mouthpiece The New Light of Myanmar exploited the event in its coverage, claiming that the UN special envoy had voiced his support for the junta's seven-step roadmap and urged the Burmese regime to ensure free and fair elections in 2010.
According to some analysts, the Nobel laureate refused to see the UN envoy before he had seen the man who calls the shots in the SPDC. She may perhaps be of the opinion that meeting with Gambari in any other circumstances would be futile as he would have no assurances from the senior general of any intention to commence a reconciliation process.
Burma has been under military rule since 1962. The regime has earned the shameful reputation of being one of the world's worst human rights violators. It brutally suppressed pro-democracy movements in 1988, on 30 May 2003 in the Depayin conspiracy and during the Saffron Revolution in September 2007. There have been many more intermittent crackdowns. The junta has arrested over two thousand political dissidents including the Nobel laureate of Burma, who has been confined to her residence for 13 of the last 19 years. Furthermore, the junta has been intensifying its crackdown on democracy supporters to protect its undemocratic 2010 elections.
Amid the disaster wrought by Cyclone Nargis, the regime held a referendum at gunpoint on 10 and 24 May this year and unilaterally declared a popular mandate for the charter which makes the military the final arbiter of the destiny of the Burmese people. The new elections planned for 2010 will legalise military rule. Needless to say, the processes will not be free and fair any more than the referendum held at gunpoint.
The socio-economic situation is deteriorating fast, and the junta is not able to cope. It will soon come face to face with a depressing future if it continues to reject the national reconciliation process being urged by the opposition National League for Democracy and United Nationalities Alliance.
The NLD and the UNA both point out that the “ratification” of the constitution staged by the junta was invalid. Both assert that it was carried out against the will of the people and with no regard for international norms for referendums. The junta has also ignored the presidential statement of the UN Security Council issued on 11 October 2007.
The regime has turned a deaf ear to successive resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly calling for a return to democracy in Burma through a tripartite dialogue between the junta led by Senior General Than Shwe, democratic forces led by Aung San Suu Kyi, and representatives of ethnic nationalities. From the turn of events so far it is clear that the junta has no plans to heed the UN call or to release political prisoners, a precondition to facilitate a tripartite dialogue.
Many a pro-democracy citizen in Burma no longer trusts the UN envoy or his facilitation process. Quite a lot of Burmese democrats believe that the Lady's latest political stance may effectively encourage Gambari to find a way of seeing Than Shwe. It seems to be a pragmatic approach by the Lady to show her annoyance at the protocol of the generals who had arranged a meeting with her for the UN envoy while he was only allowed to see non-authoritative, low-ranking members of the regime.
More to the point, the junta put on a show of Gambari's meeting with the infamous Union Solidarity and Development Association – a bunch of hooligans similar to Hitler's "Brown Shirts" who carried out an assassination attempt on Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi on 30 May 2003 and during the course of that premeditated attack slaughtered scores of NLD supporters.
The worst is that when Gambari met with NLD members, he tried to encourage them by suggesting measures to ensure that the 2010 elections would be free and fair. But when asked about the 1990 elections he would not give an opinion. Furthermore, he did not even focus on resuming political dialogue between Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the generals.
Burmese people inside and outside the country are beginning to infer that the United Nations and its special envoy Ibrahim Gambari are preparing to support the 2010 elections, with or without the participation of key political parties such as the National League for Democracy, Shan National League for Democracy and other important ethnic parties. Such an act by the UN would mean effectively approving the seven-step roadmap strategy of the military regime.
Consequently, a question has been emerging for the world body: Will the UN recognise the 2008 military-dominated constitution unilaterally approved by the junta and its consequences?

LOCKED IN BURMA

It is hard to imagine what life must be like for Aung San Suu Kyi, locked up inside her Rangoon home, separated from her children, denied visitors, her phone line cut, her mail intercepted. Burma’s opposition leader, whose 1990 election victory was annulled by the military, is now in her 13th year of detention. She has been held continually since 2003. In June she spent her 63rd birthday alone. Unconfirmed reports suggest Suu Kyi, who has suffered health problems in the past, is unwell again. Her lawyer, Kyi Win, who was allowed to see her last month, quoted her as saying: “I am tired and I need some rest.” Following her refusal of a food delivery, there is also speculation the pro-democracy campaigner and Nobel peace prizewinner has begun a hunger strike. Her lawyer said her weight had fallen below the 7st she was known to weigh in 2003.While uncertainty surrounds Suu Kyi’s plight, there is nothing at all ambiguous about Burma’s political, social and human rights situation one year after the junta brutally suppressed the Buddhist-monk-led “saffron revolution”. By almost any measure, it is distinctly worse. Last May’s Cyclone Nargis disaster played its part. But most of the deterioration is man-made.Despite last autumn’s storm of international condemnation and impassioned calls for action, the junta continues to hold more than 2,000 political prisoners, including leaders of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy such as U Win Tin, in jail since 1989. UN attempts to foster political reform have got nowhere. And trade sanctions imposed by the US and EU are being undermined by the generals’ energy deals with China, Thailand and India. Oil and gas sales topped $3.3bn last year.According to Benjamin Zawacki of Amnesty International, half a million people are internally displaced. He said the army is continuing “systematic” rights violations against Karen and other ethnic minorities including “extrajudicial killings, torture, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, forced labour, crop destruction [and] restrictions of movement”.Amid some of the worst poverty, health problems and corruption in the world, many people now have only one wish: escape. Even long-suffering Zimbabweans have an option to flee to neighbouring countries. But the Burmese are locked in, held down by their rulers and not wanted in India, China or Thailand. With an estimated population of more than 50 million, Burma has become the world’s biggest prison camp.“The UN mission has been a complete failure,” said Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK. Since Ibrahim Gambari, a former Nigerian foreign minister, was appointed special envoy in May 2006, the number of political prisoners had doubled, ethnic cleansing in eastern Burma had intensified, and humanitarian aid for Cyclone Nargis victims was blocked, he said.“There has been a massive deterioration in the human rights situation. But during Gambari’s last two visits no senior member of the regime bothered to see him,” Farmaner said. “He is seen as biased towards the regime and we think he should resign. He no longer has the respect or confidence of either side.”Criticism of Gambari was also voiced by the NLD. It said his visits, the last of which ended on August 23, had produced “no positive developments”. The party said the UN envoy’s offer to help the junta organise elections in 2010 under a new constitution that the opposition rejects had undermined his independence. For her part, ill or not, Suu Kyi twice refused to meet Gambari, reportedly leaving him standing on her doorstep.Farmaner said the time had come for Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, to take personal charge before the country exploded again. He is due to visit Burma in December following talks with Asian leaders. “There have been 37 UN visits in 20 years but things just get worse. Now they need to set timelines and benchmarks which the junta must meet. The first benchmark should be the release of all political prisoners,” he said. It was also essential the UN security council fully back the process, and be ready to pass a punitive resolution if the generals did not comply.Farmaner praised Gordon Brown who he said was personally committed to ending the impasse and actively raised Burma at the UN and in other forums. But other western leaders, and countries with real leverage such as China, were less concerned now the media spotlight illuminated by last autumn’s revolt had shifted elsewhere. “There is an increasing sense of desperation,” Farmaner said. “People were very depressed after the uprising, very frightened. But there was hope that Gambari would do something. Now that hope has gone and there is even more repression than before. At the moment, the fear is stronger than the anger. But that could change.”