Burma's suffering is also ours
By : Desmond Tutu
The world can and must hold the country’s leader and his regime accountable for atrocities against the Burmese.
I THINK of my sister Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi every day. Her picture hangs on the wall of my office, reminding me that, thousands of miles away in Asia, a nation is oppressed. Every day I ask myself: have I done everything I can to end the atrocities being committed in Burma? And I pray that world leaders will ask themselves the same question. For if they did, the answer would be ‘‘no’’, and perhaps their conscience will finally force them to act.
Humankind has the ability to live in freedom and in peace. We have seen that goodness has triumphed over evil; we have witnessed political transitions in South Africa and elsewhere, evidence that we live in a moral universe. Our world is sometimes lacking wise and good leadership or, as in the case of Burma, the leadership is forbidden to lead.
Aung San Suu Kyi has now been detained for more than 13 years. She recently passed her 5000th day in detention. Every one of those days is a tragedy and a lost opportunity. The whole world, not just the people of Burma, suffers from this loss. We desperately need the kind of moral and principled leadership that Suu Kyi would provide. And when you add the more than 2100 political prisoners who are also in Burma’s jails, and the thousands more jailed in recent decades, the true scale of injustice, but also of lost potential, becomes heartbreakingly clear.
Like many leaders, Suu Kyi has had to make great personal sacrifices. The generals try to use her as leverage to make her submit to their will. They refused to allow her husband to visit one last time when he was dying of cancer. She has grandchildren she has never even met. Yet her will and determination have stayed strong.
More than anything, the new trial and detention of Suu Kyi speaks volumes about her effectiveness as a leader. The only reason the generals need to silence her clarion call for freedom is because she is the greatest threat to their continuing rule.
The demand for human freedom cannot be suppressed forever. This is a universal truth that Than Shwe, the dictator of Burma, has failed to understand. How frustrated must he be that no matter how long he keeps Suu Kyi in detention, no matter how many guns he buys, and no matter how many people he imprisons, Suu Kyi and the people of Burma will not submit. The demands for freedom grow louder and echo around the world, reaching even his new capital hidden in central Burma. Words, however, are not enough. Freedom is never given freely by those who have power; it has to be fought for.
The continuing detention of Suu Kyi and Burma’s other political prisoners is an indictment on an international community that often substitutes the issuance of repeated statements of concern for effective diplomacy. The UN treats the situation in Burma as if it is just a dispute between two sides, and they must mediate to find a middle ground. The reality is that a brutal, criminal and illegal dictatorship is trying, and failing, to crush those who want freedom and justice.
Change is overdue to the framework within which the international community approaches Burma. Twenty years of trying to persuade Burma’s generals to reform has not secured any improvement. Forty visits by UN envoys have failed to elicit any change. The warm embrace of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) did not improve the behaviour of the regime towards Burma’s citizens whether Christian, Buddhist or Muslim.
Suu Kyi and her supporters have time and again offered a path of reconciliation and non-violent transition. Even as Suu Kyi stood before the regime’s sham court, facing five years’ imprisonment, we heard her voice loud and strong. She said: ‘‘There could be many opportunities for national reconciliation if all parties so wished.’’
Burma’s generals must now face the consequences of their actions. The detention of Suu Kyi is as clear a signal as we could get that there will be no chance of reform and that the regime’s ‘‘road map to democracy’’, including the call for elections in 2010, is an obstacle to justice.
Crimes in Burma, a new report from Harvard Law School commissioned by some of the most respected jurists in international law, has used the UN’s own reports to highlight how Burma’s generals have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Than Shwe should be held accountable for abominable atrocities: his soldiers rape ethnic women and children, they torture, mutilate and murder at will. In eastern Burma, more than 3300 ethnic villages have been destroyed, more than in Darfur. Civilians are deliberately targeted and shot on sight.
Than Shwe spurned those willing to provide help after cyclone Nargis. Instead, he conducted a referendum and declared his undemocratic constitution the victor while victims perished from the cyclone’s devastation. The UN must establish a commission of inquiry, with a view to compiling evidence for prosecution of Than Shwe and the rest of the generals. Failure to do so amounts to complicity with these crimes.
Those countries supplying arms to Burma are facilitating these atrocities. Countries across the world must declare their support for a global arms embargo, making it impossible for China to resist such a move at the Security Council.
Aung San Suu Kyi and the people of Burma deserve nothing less than our most strenuous efforts to help them secure their freedom. Every day we must ask ourselves: have we done everything that we can? I pledge that I will not rest until Suu Kyi, and all the people of Burma, are free. Please join me.
GUARDIAN : Desmond Tutu is the former archbishop of Cape Town. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.
THE administration of justice in Burma has a certain predictability when it involves any perceived threat to the ruling junta. It came as no surprise, then, that after an 86-day trial characterised by delays and a lack of proper judicial process, a military-dominated court in Rangoon this week found democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi guilty of breaching the terms of her house arrest by failing to report an uninvited visit by an American man who swam to her lakeside home.
Under Burmese law, the Nobel laureate faced up to five years in prison. In the end, Ms Suu Kyi, who has spent nearly 14 of the past
20 years under house arrest, had her home detention extended by another 18 months. Significantly, the court's original sentence of three years' hard labour was reduced after the so-called intervention of the country's military leader, Senior General Than Shwe.
Seen in the most positive light, this relatively lenient sentence could be interpreted as a sign that the regime was swayed by the force of international concern over Ms Suu Kyi's welfare and widespread calls for her release. Given that the regime has historically shown little regard for world opinion, however, this is unlikely to be the case.
Others have suggested the junta may have hoped that this ostensibly magnanimous gesture would somehow make its illegal rule more acceptable to the rest of the world and in turn ease the pressure upon it to change its ways and conform to the internationally accepted norms of conduct. But, again, the generals have demonstrated on many occasions - most recently by their bloody suppression of the 2007 uprising by Buddhist monks and the criminally negligent response to Cyclone Nargis the following year - that they do not care what the world thinks of them. They are prepared to weather a barrage of criticism and international sanctions while ensuring their control of the country remains entrenched.
As the season of the world’s prestigious prize announcements are underway, the circumstances of two renowned Nobel Peace Prize recipients are riveting: the stories of Barack Obama of the United States of America and Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma.
Many Americans awoke surprised on October 9 when the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2009 peace prize to the 44th president of the United States of America. In fact, the president himself said he was “surprised and deeply humbled” and does not deserve to be in the company of many other transformative figures who have been honoured. By receiving the prize in less than a year in the White House, Obama has become the fourth sitting US president to be honoured by the Nobel Committee. The other three recipients were: Jimmy Carter in 2002, Woodrow Wilson in 1919, and Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.
Though there are pockets of criticisms and reservations on the selection, the Nobel Committee was convinced that it was too good to ignore Obama’s emphasis on disarmament and diplomacy. The committee was reportedly buoyed by Obama’s vision of a nuclear-free world, laid out in a speech in Prague and in April and at the United Nations in September.
In his historic address to the Muslim world from Cairo in June, Obama tried to reinvigorate the relationship between the United States and the Muslims. He offered a new beginning of relationship based upon mutual interest and mutual respect, and common principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.