October 9, 2003

Since the May 30th premeditated attack on the Nobel Peace Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and followers of her National League for Democracy party (NLD) in Burma, hundreds of democracy advocates have been killed, arrested or have disappeared. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi herself and many of the top NLD leaders have also been detained. Owing to international pressure for her release, the SPDC regime has allowed delegates of the International Committee for Red Cross and the U.N Special Envoy Razali Ismail to meet Daw Aung San Suu Kyi under "protective custody". But it has denied requests from other foreign diplomats to meet her.

The present political progress of Burma has halted as the regime completely ignored the will of the Burmese people in 1990 (when they voted overwhelmingly for NLD in favor of democracy). Instead, over 13 years later, the SPDC has announced a new 'Roadmap' which covers the transition of the country towards Democracy – although when this will happen, nobody knows. It is surprising that, compared to the reality, the Bali summit of ASEAN has stated: “ASEAN welcome the recent positive developments in Myanmar [Burma] and the government's pledge to bring about a transition to democracy through dialogue and reconciliation”.

It was a noteworthy irony that on May 6th, 2002, the day when Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest for the second time, the regime released an online information sheet titled “Turning of a New Page”, which allowed its citizens to participate in the political process. But the recent May 30th massacre indicates that the junta never keeps its promises. This is the normal practice of the military regime: making promises and destroying those promises, pledging and ignoring those pledges.

We would like to inform you that the reality is contrary to the meaning of freedom, meeting with everyone, moving around freely, as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been incommunicado since the May 30th attack, U Aung Shwe, chairman of the National League for Democracy, has been under house arrest and U Tin Oo, vice chairman, is in a remote prison. Moreover there are over 1,600 political prisoners in Burma's various prisons. All the arrests were because of participation in the country’s political process.

Hence, we would like International governments, especially the ASEAN leaders, to take note of the following excerpt from the report presented by the Secretary General Kofi Annan on August 28th, 2003 at the United Nations general assembly.

“(12) As a result of the events of 30 May and subsequent developments, the three-year-old home-grown process of national reconciliation, as understood by the United Nations, has come to a complete halt. The longer the detention of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other NLD leaders goes on and the longer sustained absence of substantive dialogue continue, the harder it will be to revive the process. Despite this prognosis, the Secretary-General continues to believe that dialogue remains the answer to the challenges confronting Myanmar today and that there is still a small window of opportunity at the present moment to save the process.”

Arrest and release is the regime’s policy for buying time and deceiving the International community. When they arrested Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, they received a lot of International pressure. If they cannot handle the International pressure, they release her again. When they release, they receive applause. It has been a theory used by them as a good weapon to oppress its people and to try and trick ASEAN and the International Community.

As long as her members and ethnic opposition parties (including cease-fire groups) cannot meet with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi freely, we declare that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is under arrest. To be able to bring back political normalcy in Burma, we believe that the SPDC regime must stop all human rights violations and release Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, U Tin Oo and all other political prisoners immediately and unconditionally.

Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma)