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ACTIONS OF BURMESE GOVERNMENT
Statements(Standing Order 25B)
By Scott Fraser - MLA - Alberni-Qualicum
May 22, 2008 in the House

S. Fraser: On May 31 last year, I stood in this legislature requesting that all MLAs join me in calling for the immediate release of Nobel prize laureate and true elected leader of Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi. She remains under house arrest today in Burma. 

We are witnessing an indifferent response from the Burmese military junta to what started out as a natural disaster, cyclone Nargis, and quickly turned into a humanitarian catastrophe, a manmade disaster. The continued junta's refusal of foreign aid workers, the unwillingness to accept logistical assistance that is imperative and the theft of foreign aid products by the junta is all putting the lives of 1.5 million people at risk. 

It is bad enough the initial cyclone has killed over 200,000 people — close to the same number of lives lost by all countries combined in the 2004 tsunami, but the military junta didn't even warn its own citizens it was coming. The military junta of Burma is now actually letting another 1.5 million of its citizens move towards death. This is unacceptable.

Since the military government stole power in 1962, the world has sat and watched Burma violate human rights to the extreme. The list is long as one's morbid imagination — murder, rape, imprisonment of political prisoners. The killing of monks and the military junta's indifference to the lives of cyclone survivors must have stressed — hopefully, has stressed — our collective apathy to its limit. 

We are a global community. We must do more. Canada is accepting refugees from camps in Thailand full of Burmese who have fled the junta, but this is not enough. All Burmese deserve basic human rights, but they deserve them in their own homeland, not in a far-off country. 

We must push the world to do more. We must do more. This madness must end.

[DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]

 

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