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Recent Canadian media coverage and action on Burma

 

Recent Canadian media coverage and action on Burma


News/articles:

  • National Post: Suu Kyi's Always with us
  • Vancouver Sun : Burma's junta impervious to 'international pressure'
  • Globe and Mail: Myanmar junta extends Suu Kyi detention
  • CBC: Myanmar extends democracy leader Suu Kyi's detention
  • Toronto Star: Burma jails democracy advocate
  • AFP: Canada demands Myanmar release political prisoners
  • Epoch Times: Exiled Burmese Journalists Win International Award
  • Ottawa Citizen: Canada can't be afraid to champion democracy

Statements/Press Releases:

  • Statement by Minister Mackay on Democracy in Burma
  • PFOB and CFOB call for Su Su Nway's release
  • Statement by MP Scott Reid in the Parliament on Su Su Nway's arrest
  • PFOB response to attacks on two Burmese activists
  • Ivanhoe's Burma assets on sale, leaving behind environ mess
  • Ivanhoe Mines fourth biggest contributor to Burma's export earnings

Web-blog:

Just another Monday morning in Ottawa - "Burma Working Group" meeting

 

Letter:

  • Open letter to Than Shwe from 59 former heads of state

                                                         

 

News/articles:

 

National Post:  Suu Kyi's Always with us

Myanmar still run by brutal junta 17 years after the elected leader jailed

Peter Goodspeed

June 02, 2007

She is known in Myanmar as "The Lady." Aung San Suu Kyi won 82% of the vote in the country's last democratic elections in 1990. For that crime the military junta has imprisoned her in her family's crumbling mansion for almost 17 years.

The heavily guarded compound on University Avenue, on the south shore of Yangon's Inya Lake, is surrounded by soldiers and coils of barbed wire and has become a prison where the sickly 61-year-old widow has been held in virtual solitary confinement for 11 of the last 17 years.

She has not seen her sons Kim and Alexander for years and, fearing she would be exiled, was unable to attend the funeral of her husband, Oxford academic Michael Aris, in Britain in 1999.

Ms. Suu Kyi, who has high blood pressure, is allowed to see her doctor only once every two months (the medical visits used to be monthly but the military cut back on them two years ago).

The only other people she sees are a live-in maid who shares her imprisonment and her jailers.

Myanmar 's generals regularly replace the soldiers who guard her, for fear she might gain too much influence over them.

Like South Africa's Nelson Mandela, who was jailed for 27 years, Ms. Suu Kyi is regarded as a symbol of heroic peaceful resistance in the face of oppression.

Drive slowly past the lakeside compound and your taxi driver is likely to tell you, "In our hearts we are with her," or, "She is always with us."

Despite years in detention and forced isolation, "The Lady" still has the power to encourage her followers and to enrage Myanmar's rulers.

She is a last lingering hope in the dark reality that is Myanmar, formerly Burma.

Last weekend, as a prelude to the 17th anniversary of her election victory, the generals extended her detention order for yet another year.

The move came in spite of an unprecedented appeal by 59 current and former world leaders for her release.

Kjell Magne Bondevik, a former Norwegian prime minister, managed to collect the signatures of two former Canadian prime ministers, Kim Campbell and Brian Mulroney, three past U.S. presidents and 15 Asian former presidents and prime ministers in a call "for the immediate release of the world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize Laureate."

"Aung San Suu Kyi is not calling for revolution in Burma, but rather peaceful, non-violent dialogue, between the military, National League for Democracy [her party] and Burma's ethnic groups," the letter said.

The plea was ignored by the junta, which is better known for repression, secrecy and xenophobic paranoia than diplomatic dexterity.

When news of Ms. Suu Kyi's continued imprisonment broke, Germany, as current president of the 27-member European Union, issued a statement complaining, "All international appeals ? have once more gone unheard. Myanmar demonstrated persistent unwillingness to engage all political and ethnic forces of the country in a genuine dialogue to bring about true national reconciliation and the establishment of democracy."

On Thursday, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared Myanmar's detention of Ms. Suu Kyi to be "arbitrary" and in contravention of three provisions of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

But in Asia's heart of darkness, international complaints account for little.

Myanmar remains riddled with poverty and privation. For 45 years it has been a state under siege by its own military.

The general elections in 1990, which overwhelmingly supported Ms. Suu Kyi and her demands for democracy, have been ignored. Opposition parties have been outlawed, their leaders jailed or placed under house arrest or silenced through murder or fear.

The tales of horror that leak out are reminiscent of those that emerged from Pol Pot's Cambodian killing fields.

Over 45 years of military rule more than 1 million half-starved and frightened refugees have moved to neighbouring Thailand, Bangladesh and India. They tell stories of mass murder, rape, torture and religious persecution.

More than 100,000 Muslims from Myanmar's northwestern state of Arakan have taken refuge in Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations on earth. Another 150,000 ethnic Karen have crossed the border into Thailand to avoid a war of extermination that has raged in the jungles of eastern Myanmar for nearly 60 years. About 2,000 Naga tribes people in the north have fled to India and more than 30,000 people from the northeastern state of Kachin now live in China.

Elsewhere, the military has destroyed more than 3,000 villages and forced 600,000 people from their homes into the jungles of eastern Myanmar.

The generals dismiss international objections to their atrocities, saying it's an internal affair and should be of no interest to the rest of the world.

Yet Myanmar now has more than 1,100 political prisoners in addition to Ms. Suu Kyi. Its army uses rape as a weapon of war and forcibly recruits up to 70,000 child soldiers, more than any other country.

Nearly five decades of disastrous mismanagement, in which the military experimented with "Burmese Socialism" while pillaging the country's resources, have turned Myanmar into an economic disaster zone.

Once of the richest countries in Southeast Asia, it is now one of the world's poorest. Nearly half the children under five are malnourished, says Save the Children, and up to 150,000 youngsters die each year from preventable diseases such as malaria and diarrhea.

Yet the military enjoys power and privilege, creating a statewithin- a-state in which servicemen and their dependents benefit from special schools, hospitals, stores and subsidized housing.

The generals have grown rich while relentlessly tightening their grip on the country and auctioning off its natural resources.

They supplement their income by churning out huge quantities of methamphetamines for the illegal drug trade and are the world's second-largest producers of opium, after Afghanistan.

The discovery of offshore gas fields near Arakan in 2000 will soon generate between US$800- million and US$3-billion a year in new revenues for the junta, which has engaged in such bizarre behaviour as secretly moving the nation's capital, now known as Naypyidaw (Seat of Kings), to a remote rural area north of Yangon, simply on the advice of an astrologer.

Since 1990, Myanmar has spent US$3-billion on Chinese weapons even though it faces no obvious external threat.

Shunned by most of the world, the resource-rich nation still does business with China, North and South Korea, Thailand, Singapore and India. Just last month, Russia announced it will supply Myanmar with its first nuclear reactor in a scheme to build a nuclear research centre.

Beijing is the junta's staunchest ally and has invested in natural gas research, oil exploration and hydroelectric projects in Myanmar. It has also won long-term energy contracts from the generals and the right to use a crucial naval base on the Andaman Sea.

China put down its own prodemocracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989, a year after Myanmar's military crushed the protests led by Ms. Suu Kyi. Clearly, China's communist leaders have no ideological interest in encouraging Myanmar's rulers to reform.

In the face of the junta's reliance on force and terror and the opportunism of its neighbours, Ms. Suu Kyi's continued imprisonment is proof of her political clout.

Though silent and ailing, she remains dangerous as the only person who can unite a broad array of forces against the generals.

____________________________________

 

Vancouver Sun: Burma's junta impervious to 'international pressure'

 

Jonathan Manthorpe

June 01, 2007

The information minister in Burma's junta, Gen. Kyaw Hsan, is fond of telling visiting dignitaries that detained National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi "is irrelevant."

To which the obvious appropriate answer is: Then why has the military regime just renewed the order for her house arrest?

The truth is that after spending 11 of the past 17 years in detention, Suu Kyi is still as popular with Burmese people as when the NLD conclusively won elections in 1990, elections the junta refuses to acknowledge.

And she is probably the only person who could broker with the junta a return to democracy without the generals facing judicial retribution for their decades of obscene abuses of human rights.

But the junta's supreme leader, Gen. Than Shwe, who has been called "the most powerful and least educated man in Burma," is impervious to reason or to pressure.

In the days running up to May 27, when Suu Kyi's last term of house arrest expired, there was the most outspoken campaign for her release that has been seen throughout her years of detention. Demands for the release of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate came from the United Nations General Assembly, the European Union and even the 10-state Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Burma is a member.

In addition to this was a letter signed by 59 former presidents and prime ministers including such unlikely bedmates as the first president George Bush, Bill Clinton, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, recently departed Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Mozambique's former Marxist revolutionary leader Joaquim Chissano.

There is no indication that this list of luminaries caused Than Shwe to blink or hesitate for a moment. Quite the reverse.

He seems convinced the international community is all blather and has no real will to engineer the downfall of his junta in favour of a representative and accountable civilian government.

He is probably right.

The devaluation of the currency of international human rights advocacy since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and Washington's other extra-judicial responses to terrorism have been of enormous succour to Burma's generals and to other despots around the world.

More than that, Burma has recently become of great economic and geo-strategic interest to Asian powers, especially China and India.

Beijing has made northern Burma, with its rich reserves of natural resources, into what amounts to an economic colony with the added benefit of a strategic land corridor from China's southwestern provinces to the Indian Ocean.

India's interest in Burma is partly a response to the firm foothold achieved by rival China, but primarily a result of the wish to develop land routes for trade with the vibrant economies of ASEAN.

With these powerful interests at his shoulder, Than Shwe shows little fear of the international community mustering enough will to depose him.

Indeed, there is a growing conviction among Burma-watchers and the substantial community of exiles in various countries that Than Shwe is in the process of abandoning the half-hearted "road map" towards an eventual transition to a civilian government that was begun in 2003.

The junta's aim always was to design a constitution that appeared to provide a civilian government, but which left all significant power in the hands of the military.

Than Shwe does not appear to believe that even this charade is necessary now.

He has embarked on a new course of international defiance by contracting with Moscow for the construction of a 10-megawatt nuclear reactor.

The junta's interest in acquiring nuclear know-how began in the 1960s when several exploitable deposits of uranium were discovered, but has made little progress since.

The deal with Russia includes the training of about 300 Burmese officers in nuclear physics. Burma and Moscow insist the deal is entirely innocent, is only for scientific and power generation purposes and has no potential for weapons development.

But the junta has recently renewed diplomatic relations with North Korea, which were severed in 1983. In the past few months two North Korean ships have made mysterious visits to Burmese ports and there is speculation that missile or nuclear technology was delivered.

____________________________________

 

Globe and Mail: Myanmar junta extends Suu Kyi detention

 

Reuters and Globe and Mail

May 25, 2007

YANGON — Myanmar's military junta extended the house arrest of opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi for yet another year on Friday, ignoring international pleas for her release, a government source said.

"Home Ministry officials went to her residence and read it out to her," the source said of the order issued two days before her detention was set to expire.

The decision to keep Ms. Suu Kyi, 61, confined in her lakeside home in Yangon had been widely expected despite appeals from the White House, United Nations and fellow Nobel winners to the generals ruling the former Burma.

She has now been in detention for more than 11 of the last 17 years and United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, called her confinement "cruel and unacceptable".

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said in a statement that the Myanmar regime "consistently violates the most fundamental human rights" of the Burmese people.

"Canada calls upon the Burmese government to respect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of the people of Burma, engage in a genuine dialogue with members of the democratic opposition, and release immediately all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi," he said.

Debbie Stothard, a member of the activist Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, said in Thailand: "The regime is obviously more afraid of Aung San Suu Kyi's popularity than international opinion."

"If they had released Suu Kyi, it would have been an hasty end for the regime. There is increasing resentment over its mismanagement of the economy," she said, referring to small public protests in Yangon this year against worsening living conditions.

The last time Ms. Suu Kyi was released from house arrest, in 2002, she drew huge crowds on a tour of the country, a reminder to the generals of the huge sway the daughter of independence hero Aung San still held over Myanmar's 54 million people.

Her latest stretch of detention started "for her own safety" on May 30, 2003, after clashes between her supporters and pro-junta demonstrators.

She has been held incommunicado with her telephone line cut and no visitors allowed apart from her maid and doctor.

Sanctions imposed by the West, including the United States which renewed its penalties earlier this month, have had little effect on the military, which has ruled Myanmar in various guises since 1962.

But neither has the soft diplomacy employed by Myanmar's partners in the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), which has become frustrated by the junta's intransigence.

Myanmar and Ms. Suu Kyi's detention was not discussed by ASEAN officials meeting in Manila this week to prepare for a regional summit in July.

Mark Farmaner, acting director of the Burma Campaign UK, said the Security Council's failure to pass a resolution on Myanmar earlier this year had given the junta confidence it could defy the international community without consequence.

"They are having a good year," Mr. Farmaner said, also complaining about what he called a lack of strong action by the European Union and other U.N. bodies.

"The international community is all huff and no puff, so it is ignored," he said in a statement.

Ms. Suu Kyi is being held under an obscure security decree that has to be renewed every 12 months.

Quite why the junta, which ignored a sweeping election victory by her National League for Democracy in 1990, makes such a show of observing the rule of law in keeping her in isolation is a mystery.

"They just make the laws for their own convenience," Khun Saing, an exiled dissident now living in Thailand, told Reuters this week.

____________________________________

CBC: Myanmar extends democracy leader Suu Kyi's detention

May 25, 2007

Myanmar extended the house arrest of Nobel Peace laureate and democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi on Friday for another year, according to government officials.

Suu Kyi, who has been confined by the country's ruling junta for 11 of the last 17 years, was to complete her latest detention term Sunday.

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won a general election in 1990, but the military junta, which seized power in 1988, ignored the result and instead persecuted members of the pro-democracy movement.

The Oxford-educated Suu Kyi has been held since May 2003, when her motorcade was attacked by a mob linked to the junta during a political tour in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.
  
UN High Commissioner Louise Arbour, a Canadian, called for the unconditional release of Suu Kyi and more than 1,000 other political prisoners it holds in prisons and labour camps throughout the country.

Suu Kyi's release "would demonstrate a willingness to abide by universally accepted human rights standards," she said.

"It would also, I believe, facilitate national dialogue, and free the government and the people to focus on the need to unite the country and to allow the emergence of democratic structures to decide on the way forward."

Canada, the United States, the European Union and many other countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Japan have also urged Myanmar to free Suu Kyi.

UN agencies have accused Myanmar, one of the world's most isolated countries, of practising torture and forced labour, and using its military to target Karen ethnic minority in the country's eastern regions.

About 140,000 Karen live in refugee camps in Thailand. The influx began after the junta attacked a separatist group, the Karen National Union, in 1995, and continued a systematic campaign of persecution against Karen civilians that included torture, burning of villages and forced relocation.

With files from the Associated Press

____________________________________

 

AFP: Canada demands Myanmar release political prisoners

May 25, 2007

Ottawa (AFP) - Canada on Friday demanded the release of political prisoners in Myanmar (Burma), including a Nobel laureate and leader of the Asian nation's democratic opposition whose jailing has sparked protests.

"Canada calls upon the Burmese government to respect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of the people of Burma, engage in a genuine dialogue with members of the democratic opposition, and release immediately all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi," Foreign Minister Peter MacKay said in a statement.

Aung San Suu Kyi, a pro-democracy activist whose father won Myanmar's independence from Britain in 1943, was first arrested in 1989.

Ottawa's criticism of Myanmar's "authoritarian and repressive government" came two days ahead of the 17th anniversary of the country's last democratic elections, won by her National League for Democracy party but ignored by the country's military rulers.

Friday, the government said Aung San Suu Kyi would remain under house arrest for one more year, despite growing international pressure to free her.

"The Burmese regime consistently violates the most fundamental human rights of the people of Burma," MacKay said.

"The April 18 attack on two human rights workers and last weeks arrests of activists calling for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, including noted labour activist Su Su Nway, once again demonstrate the Burmese regime's brutal disregard for human rights, freedom of expression and democracy."

____________________________________

 

Toronto Star : Burma jails democracy advocate
Canadian group gave Su Su Nway freedom award last year in absentia

Leslie Scrivener

May 17, 2007

It was inevitable that Su Su Nway would end up back in prison. The Burmese human rights activist who defied the forced labour practices in her country was arrested again this week with some 30 others.

Su Su Nway, who was honoured with Canada's John Humphrey Freedom Award last year, was leading other members of the opposition National League for Democracy in prayer in a Buddhist temple outside the notorious Insein prison, where she was held for eight months in 2005 until international pressure led to her release. She didn't attend the December ceremonies in Ottawa, for fear she wouldn't be allowed back into Burma, renamed Myanmar by its military junta.

The prayers, which have continued all month, were for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, the 61-year-old leader of the Burmese democracy movement, who has been imprisoned for 11 of the past 17 years. The junta extends her house arrest annually. The current term ends May 27; it is expected to be renewed.

International groups, including Canada's Parliamentary Friends of Burma, are demanding that Su Su Nway, 34, be released and Aung Sang Suu Kyi be freed. "The arrest of Su Su Nway is ... a slap in the face to Canadians," said former secretary of state David Kilgour, chair of the Canadian Friends of Burma advisory council.

On Monday, 59 former world leaders sent a letter to junta leader Gen. Than Shwe, arguing for Aung Sang Suu Kyi's release. She is not calling for revolution, it said, but "peaceful, non-violent dialogue between the military, National League for Democracy and Burma's ethnic groups."

Former prime minister Brian Mulroney, former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush, and former British prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major signed.

The unblinking courage of both women shows that the fight for democracy in Burma is by no means finished, dismal though it may look outside the country, exiled Burmese journalist Soe Myint said in Toronto yesterday. He is the founder of Mizzima news agency, which this week won the Free Media Pioneer award from the International Press Institute, a press freedom watchdog.

Mizzima is a multimedia news agency based in New Delhi, with freelancers inside Burma. Its newspaper, The Mizzima Journal, is smuggled into Burma and anyone found in possession of copies can be arrested, Soe Myint says. Its website is banned but Burmese can access it through proxy servers.

"Some people think Burma is becoming like Tibet – a lost cause," said Soe Myint, 39. "Next year will be 20 years (of military rule) and this tells us of the resilience of the people."

Su Su Nway's arrest is a sign of their endurance, he added. "The people are fighting, Su Su Nway knows she will be arrested and will go to jail. It shows people are not giving up. This is all part of the political struggle."

____________________________________

 

Epoch Times: Exiled Burmese Journalists Win International Award

Editor-in-chief tours Canada raising awareness of situation in Burma

 

By Cindy Chan

Ottawa Staff

 

A news agency founded by Burmese journalists in exile in India has won a prestigious international award for its work to promote press freedom and democracy in military-controlled Burma.

 

The International Press Institute (IPI) presented Mizzima News with its 2007 Free Media Pioneer Award at the IPI World Congress in Istanbul, Turkey on May 15.

 

Soe Myint, Mizzima's founder and editor-in-chief, was in Canada this month to speak on the situation in Burma and meet with Canadian government officials and media organizations.

 

Media Darkness in Burma

In an interview with The Epoch Times , Myint spoke of the lack of media freedom in Burma since the military takeover in 1962. Currently there are at least 13 journalists in prison, and more than 1,000 political prisoners. Myint said that anyone who criticizes the government is treated as an "enemy of the state."

 

There are also serious restrictions against the free flow of information through the Internet. Mizzima's websites are banned, along with many other websites originating outside Burma. Moreover, the Burmese military junta uses media as "part of the government propaganda machinery."

 

The good news is that the Burmese people are overcoming the censorship and information blockade through technology. One way this can be done, says Myint, is by viewing forbidden websites through proxy servers.

 

Urging Greater Canadian Support

After accepting 810 Burmese Karen refugees to Canada in 2006, the government announced plans this past February to welcome an additional 2,000 over the next two years. Myint said this was "very good and very encouraging," but noted that Canada's mainly humanitarian support for Burma is "frankly not enough."

 

"Canada has a strong democratic tradition and a strong tradition of independent media and should provide more proactive political support and sensible financial support for the democratic movement in Burma," he said.

 

Out of Mizzima's 2006 budget of $200,000, only $7,000 came from Canadian sources. These were the Burma Relief Center in Thailand, and the Canadian charity Inter Pares, which in turn are supported by the Canadian International Development Agency. Myint said this is "little compared to other countries."

Myint also said Canadian media have a very "effective and definite role" in helping develop an independent media in Burma, because it is "different from other media which are easily controlled by the state, industry, or money."

 

One Canadian group which has helped draw attention to Burma recently is Rights and Democracy, an independent organization established by Canada's Parliament. They awarded its 2006 John Humphrey Freedom Award to Su Su Nway of Burma for her efforts to resist the Burmese regime's practice of forced labour.

 

Last week Myint spoke at an event in Vancouver organized by Amnesty International, Canadian Friends of Burma, and the Vancouver-Burma Roundtable. The focus was on Canadian mining companies, the biggest being Ivanhoe Mines, that are operating in Burma on a profit-sharing agreement with the military regime. A key concern is the resulting environmental damage.

 

Another is human rights.

 

The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, for example, says it's impossible to do business in Burma without supporting the military's use of forced labour. Amnesty International Canada has a campaign that encourages the public and shareholders to write to companies that operate in repressive countries like Burma to hold them accountable for human rights.

 

Importance of International Voices

Mizzima monitors and sends alerts on violations against press freedoms in Burma. As a member of the Bangkok-based South East Asian Press Alliance and the Toronto-based International Freedom of Express eXchange, Mizzima's alerts are ensured to immediately reach a host of regional and international organizations.

 

There's been a lot of success, Myint said. The alerts help mobilize international pressure upon the Burmese government and encourage the journalists inside Burma, who "risk their lives and liberties to fight against government policy and censorship."

 

Myint said Burmese journalists in exile also face problems. Outside Burma, Mizzima has journalists reporting from Bangladesh, China, India, and Thailand. These countries' "friendly relations" with the Burmese government mean that Burmese journalists residing there cannot get work permits to practice their profession and are often threatened.

 

He said they are overcoming these challenges through "total solidarity" between Burmese journalists inside and outside Burma, and with the support of local journalists in those countries.

 

Myint calls for greater international support for the democratic movement in Burma. He emphasized the need for a "political breakthrough" where the National League for Democracy (NLD), other political parties, and minority groups can work with the military to solve Burma's problems.

 

Without such a participatory process, Myint said, the 7-step "roadmap to democracy" and the National Convention created by the military regime can only fail. And even if NLD leader and Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi were released from detention tomorrow, she will be rearrested in time, he added.

The military government refused to acknowledge Suu Kyi's landslide election victory in 1990. Ever since, she has spent more than ten of the past 17 years under some form of detention.

 

Burma is currently one of the least developed countries in the world by UN figures. Myint recalled that at one time the country was regarded as the "rice bowl of Asia" and enjoyed more than a decade of parliamentary democracy before the military takeover in 1962. He called for greater support from Canada and other countries to restore human rights and democracy in Burma.

____________________________________

 

Ottawa Citizen: Canada can't be afraid to champion democracy

 

Kate Heartfield

June 03, 2007

 

Last month I met a woman whose husband, an Indonesian human-rights activist, was poisoned to death on an international flight in 2004, six years after the downfall of Suharto. The march of freedom seems to be flagging.

There are three main ways Canada can promote democracy in the world. It can spend on development, which encourages freedom. It can offer expertise and support to fragile democracies. And it can try to change the behaviour of less-democratic governments.

The last method has gone out of vogue in the past few years, and it's not hard to see why. It's difficult. It requires picking sides and taking risks. Other than in Afghanistan, Canada's attempts have been half-hearted.

There are many ways of influencing bad governments short of overthrowing them. Indeed, the failing attempt to establish democracy by force in Iraq is one reason democratization is becoming a dirty word that makes some people cringe.

In February, Ben Rowswell, a policy adviser in the Foreign Affairs Department, spoke at a conference organized by a branch of Canadian Lawyers Abroad. He mentioned another reason for the "backlash" against democratization: Dismay at the results of democratic processes, including the empowerment of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Hamas in the Palestinian Authority.

We don't have to go through an Afghanistan or Iraq every time we champion freedom. And we can't let pseudo-democrats such as Chavez poison us against democracy. Elections alone do not make a democracy.

Governments such as Canada's have many levers other than force: Trade policy, sanctions, diplomacy, statements, international resolutions, partnerships with opposition groups.

Any effort is risky: You can alienate trading partners, back the wrong horse, close diplomatic doors, make dangerous enemies and, worst of all, you can fail and be seen to fail.

But to choose not to try is the coward's way out. It's cowardly to resign ourselves to living in an insecure, unjust world. It's cowardly to wait for governments to improve on their own or be conquered by domestic forces that might never be strong enough.

Which brings me back to the man who got on a plane and was killed by a large dose of arsenic. His name was Munir Said Thalib. His widow, Suciwati, said the investigation into his death is a test case for democracy in Indonesia: "It's very difficult to see how democracy will succeed until basic human rights are respected."

The pilot's murder conviction was overturned. Now other men are under suspicion; the whole thing looks like an exercise in scapegoating, perhaps to protect the military. Until the truth is uncovered, Indonesia cannot claim to be a free country. Canada, which has regular dialogues on human rights with Indonesia, has the power to keep nudging it in the direction of freedom.

Some governments you nudge, some you push. Burma's has extended the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nelson Mandela of her country. One of her countrymen, Soe Myint, now lives in India and is editor-in-chief of a news agency in exile called Mizzima News. It's a seedling waiting to be transplanted back into native soil when Burma is free. Soe Myint, on a recent visit to Ottawa, said that while he admires Canada's efforts for refugees and other victims, he wishes we would promote democracy more vigorously. "It's not only support we are seeking. It is also involvement. It is solidarity we are seeking."

Canada has made statements about Burma. It can do more. One way to influence Burma is to influence our business partners, China and India. The 2008 Olympics could be the opportunity of a generation to push for change in Chinese domestic and foreign policy.

UN Watch recently published a Human Rights Scorecard: Canada at the United Nations, 2006-2007. It lists many missed opportunities: "Canada took no action whatsoever at the Human Rights Council or the General Assembly against China's violations of civil, political and religious rights -- which harm over a sixth of the world's population. Canada was equally silent regarding Fidel Castro's police state, where journalists languish in jail for daring to speak the truth. It said nothing about Saudi Arabia's refusal to allow women to vote or drive a car, or its state-sponsored schoolbooks that teach children to hate Christians and other non-Muslims. Nor did it protest Robert Mugabe's repression in Zimbabwe."

The report called on Canada to speak out strongly more often and to "forge a broader alliance in support of human rights, democracy, and peace."

In other words, make democratization fashionable again.

____________________________________

 

Statements/Press Releases:

 

Statement by Minister Mackay on Democracy in Burma

May 25, 2007

 

The Honourable Peter MacKay, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, today made the following statement on democratic development in Burma:

"May 27 marks the 17th anniversary of Burma's last democratic elections, which were won in a landslide by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy. Today, Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest, and Burma continues to be ruled by an authoritarian and repressive government.

"The Burmese regime consistently violates the most fundamental human rights of the people of Burma. The April 18 attack on two human rights workers and last week's arrests of activists calling for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, including noted labour activist Su Su Nway, once again demonstrate the Burmese regime's brutal disregard for human rights, freedom of expression and democracy.

 "Canada calls upon the Burmese government to respect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of the people of Burma, engage in a genuine dialogue with members of the democratic opposition, and release immediately all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi."

____________________________________

 

PFOB and CFOB call for Su Su Nway's release

May 17, 2007

 

Ottawa – Parliamentary Friends of Burma (PFOB) and Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB) call for an immediate release of Jonh Humphery Freedom Award winner Su Su Nway and other three dozens of activists who have been arrested while campaigning for freedom of Burmese democracy icon Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

 

"It is with great concern and shock that we have learned of the arrests in Burma of over 30 people including Su Su Nway. These people were simply on their way to their weekly prayers for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, whose terms of house arrest come under review later this month," said Honorable Larry Bagnell, chair of PFOB.

 

Su Su Nway who successfully filed a landmark lawsuit against authorities for the use of forced labor was first arrested on the charge of belittling the authorities and sentenced to two years imprisonment in 2005. She was released after serving eight months in prison in June, 2006.

 

"The arrest of Suu Suu Nway is 'a slap in the face' to Canadians.  She is a recent winner of the John Humphrey Freedom Award granted by Rights and Democracy in December 2006. She and others who were arrested must be released immediately," said Honorable David Kilgour, former Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific)


 

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