The Boston Globe May 5, 2008
Almost five years after a bungled attempt on her life, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest in Burma. Though her party, the National League for Democracy, won over 80 percent of seats in a 1990 parliamentary election, which the ruling junta ignored, she cannot vote in a referendum Saturday on a sham constitution designed to lend legitimacy to Burma's narco-trafficking generals.
After the regime's enforcers assaulted and killed Buddhist monks and others protesting in solidarity with them, the United Nations and regional organizations sought to coax the generals toward dialogue and political reconciliation with Suu Kyi and her party. But during his last two visits, the UN special envoy for Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, was ostentatiously snubbed by the boss of all bosses in Burma, General Than Shwe.
Now more than ever, democratic nations should use all their leverage to get the generals to release all political prisoners and commit to a democratic transition. As Human Rights Watch observed in a report released Thursday, the arrests of democratic activists, media censorship, ubiquitous spies and the lack of an independent election commission will make the referendum a travesty. The constitution on the ballot is nothing but a fig leaf to cloak continued dictatorship.
The European Union took a step in the right direction last week by calling for an international arms embargo on the junta. The EU should also enforce banking sanctions against the regime. The United States, which maintains banking sanctions, should join the call for an arms embargo.
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