Burma: The unturned page

June 5, 2006
The Boston Globe
Original Source: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2006/06/05/burma_the_unturned_page/

THE UNITED Nations was created to foster a peaceful international order built upon a foundation of collective security. It is because of the grandeur of that ideal that the UN's habitual failure to protect the victims of murderous regimes in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Sudan is so disillusioning. And sad to say, those tragic failures of the past are being reenacted today as senior UN officials and members of the UN Security Council acquiesce in the despotic brutality of the illegitimate military junta that rules Burma.
On a visit to Burma last month, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's top deputy, Under-Secretary General Ibrahim Gambari, raised hopes for progress there toward a restoration of democracy and national reconciliation. Gambari was allowed to meet with Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, imprisoned in her own house, and was granted an interview with the leader of the junta, General Than Shwe. Gambari reported that the general is ready ``to turn a new page in relations with the international community.
If Than Shwe intended to turn a new page, he would start by releasing Suu Kyi, who has been imprisoned for more than 10 of the past 17 years and whose party won 80 percent of seats in Parliament in a 1990 election the junta refused to honor. He would also release the 1,100 other political prisoners. He would open a genuine political dialogue with Suu Kyi and her party, proceeding to the democratization that the people of Burma desperately needs and that the international community has called for.
But no new page was turned. After Gambari's visit, the junta announced that Suu Kyi's confinement would continue for another year.
The lesson should be clear: Than Shwe will not change his ways without sustained international pressure on a regime that has been condemned for its use of forced labor, the flight of hundreds of thousands of refugees, and the export into neighboring countries of methamphetamine, heroin, and the accompanying spread of HIV/AIDS.
The State Department has rightly decided to pursue a UN Security Council resolution expressing ``the international community's concerns about the situation in Burma. But the most effective action would be to place Burma on the council's formal agenda, as the United States and other democracies are seeking to do. This would require constant UN attention to the plight of Burma's people. Predictably, undemocratic permanent council members China and Russia oppose this measure. Inexplicably, the UN ambassador from Japan, one of the 10 current elected council members, said Wednesday, ``we would not be happy to have the council do anything more than hear Gambari's briefings on his failed mission.
This is an attitude that betrays not only the people of Burma but also the founding ideals of the United Nations.