Myanmar's Suu Kyi May Be Released This Month-Report
_____Democracy in Burma_____
I truly hope this is so. Two articles here. It's long but alot is happening in Suu Kyi's life:
Reuters
Friday, June 13, 2003; 9:06 AM
TOKYO (Reuters) - Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been detained by the ruling military for the past two weeks, may be released later this month, an official in Myanmar's Foreign Ministry told Japanese media on Friday.
Thaung Tun, director general of the ministry's political department, was quoted by Kyodo news agency as saying that Suu Kyi could be released if the situation in Myanmar "returns to normal."
No further details were available from the interview, which was conducted in Phnom Penh ahead of a series of meetings of Asia-Pacific nations.
Myanmar's military government took Suu Kyi into what it called "protective" custody during a trip to the north on May 30 after a clash between her supporters and government forces.
Suu Kyi and about two dozen senior members of her National League for Democracy have been held at locations in or outside the Myanmar capital, sources told Reuters in Yangon. Some of the locations are undisclosed.
The government said on Tuesday they would release her as soon as possible, but gave no time frame. She has spent more than half of the last 14 years in detention at her Yangon home.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Thursday he would seek action from Asian countries on the issue during a trip to the region next week for an annual meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations Regional Forum.
U.S. Sanctions Bill Would Ban Burmese Imports
Friday, June 13, 2003;
Outraged over the latest crackdown by Burma's military junta, Congress is poised to approve legislation that would impose some of the toughest economic sanctions ever on a country for human rights violations, including a ban on the importation of Burmese goods.
The Senate passed a sanctions bill by a 97 to 1 vote on Wednesday, amid indignation over a deadly May 30 attack on the motorcade of Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of Burma's pro-democracy forces, who was later detained. Yesterday, the House International Relations Committee approved a similar bill by voice vote, and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell endorsed the "goals and intent" of the bills in a signed Wall Street Journal commentary headlined "It's Time to Turn the Tables on Burma's Thugs."
Business groups are protesting that the sanctions violate international trade rules, will accomplish little in the absence of cooperation from other countries, and contravene the longstanding U.S. policy of using "engagement," including commerce, to change the behavior of dictatorial regimes. But "when the train is moving 400 miles per hour, not a whole lot of people want to stand on the tracks," said William A. Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, a corporate-backed organization.
The proposed import ban, which would cut off shipments of textiles and other Burmese goods to the United States that totaled about $356 million last year, gives the legislation far more of an economic bite than most other human rights or pro-democracy bills that Congress has passed. The only comparable laws to be enacted in recent memory, according to Kimberly Ann Elliott, a expert on sanctions at the Institute for International Economics, are the embargo on Cuba, the sanctions that restricted commerce with South Africa's apartheid regime and similar bans on trade with Haiti in the early 1990s.
The success enjoyed by Burma's congressional critics, whose leaders include Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), marks a reversal of a trend away from the use of trade as a weapon for human rights and other foreign policy purposes. The predominance of the engagement approach was evident in the approval of "permanent normal trade relations" with China in 2000, and Powell derided sanctions as exercises in futility when the Bush administration took office.
So although commerce with poverty-stricken Burma is of scant economic significance to the United States, business representatives fear that a trade embargo on Rangoon will give human rights activists and other proponents of sanctions new momentum to press for trade restrictions on other countries. After all, if engagement has been judged a clear failure in Burma's case, that makes it harder to argue that the policy will work at loosening authoritarian control elsewhere.
"We were kind of on a roll," Reinsch said ruefully. "Someone asked me the other day for a list of sanctions that had been enacted since [the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks], and the answer is none. I thought that was a pretty good record. Then here we go." Besides the Burma legislation, "there are other bills kicking around," he noted, including one aimed at Syria, which failed to pass last year but now "has some steam behind it."
Burma is a member of the World Trade Organization, which entitles it to the same treatment for its exports as other WTO members. So if the proposed ban on Burmese imports is implemented, Rangoon would presumably file a complaint with the WTO, and it might win the right to impose a ban on imports of U.S. goods.
That is a matter of little practical consequence, since U.S. exports to Burma total only about $10 million a year -- less than one-one-thousandth of 1 percent of total exports -- and the legislation would ban those exports anyway. But the administration is concerned enough about appearing to flout WTO rules that Powell's article warned of the need to "take into account our WTO obligations." He endorsed other provisions of the bills, including a freeze on the junta's financial assets.
For now, concerns about WTO rules do not seem likely to halt the march toward sanctions, given the widespread sentiment that the oppression by the generals in Rangoon has reached intolerable levels.
Even longtime critics of sanctions, such as Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), backed McConnell's bill. Asked to explain the apparent change of heart, Lugar's spokesman, Andrew Fisher, said that although the senator "has been opposed to unilateral sanctions . . . the world is well united against the regime in Burma," and may join an embargo if Washington leads.
But Burma's main trading partners, including China and Thailand, have voiced unwillingness to go the sanctions route, and if that continues to be the case, "U.S. sanctions, or even more broadly, Western sanctions, probably aren't going to have much of an impact," said Elliott. Still, she said, "I think somehow, the regime does need to be confronted over its behavior."