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Myanmar Acivists Denounce ASEAN



Myanmar activists denounce ASEAN as problem maker

 .c Kyodo News Service    

MANILA, July 25 (Kyodo) - Supporters of the pro-democracy movement in
military-ruled Myanmar on Saturday blasted the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) for its rejection of open dialogue within the group on
sensitive issues such as human rights. 

''The credibility of ASEAN has been severely undermined because it has been
unwilling as a body to wake up to regional realities,'' said Debbie Stothard,
coordinator for the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma (Myanmar). 

''Even as they continue to be polite to each other, their elected colleagues
in Burma are being detained and tortured,'' Stothard said, referring to the
ruling junta's suppression of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy
(NLD), which won the 1990 general election that the military government
refuses to recognize. 

The ASEAN-based nongovernmental group decried that most of the ASEAN foreign
ministers opposed a proposal by their Thai colleague Surin Pitsuwan, backed by
the Philippines, that group members be allowed to comment on each other's
internal affairs to prevent them from developing into problems of regional
dimensions. 

''Like it or not, the issues of democracy and human rights are those that we
have to increasingly deal with in our engagement with the outside world,''
Surin said in a speech at annual ministerial talks Friday. 

He urged the 31-year-old grouping to allow ''open dialogue'' on previously
taboo issues to nip future crises in the bud. 

Stothard said ASEAN is in danger of turning into a club resembling fossilized
golf players if it ignored Surin's comments. 

''Instead of taking a proactive role to directly solve human crises in the
region, governments have tended to politely ignore the mess and leave it up to
others to clean up,'' she said. 

Tension between the junta and the NLD has been rising since mid-June when the
party demanded in a letter that parliament be convened by Aug. 21. 

The ASEAN ministers, who include Myanmar Foreign Minister Ohn Gyaw, did not
discuss the situation in the country despite Suu Kyi's public appeal to them
to back the NLD's demand for the convening of parliament. 

But political suppression and human rights violations in Myanmar and in
Indonesia-occupied East Timor are expected to figure prominently in ASEAN's
meetings with 10 major security players and trade partners including the
United States and the European Union (EU). 

ASEAN last year admitted Myanmar to its fold citing a policy of ''constructive
engagement'' despite strong objections from the U.S. and the EU