Kyodo News-Suu Kyi urges Australia (r)

[bina@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: Re: Kyodo News-Suu Kyi urges Australia to support Myanmar  democracy

Australian Foreign Minister Downer and Human Rights Commissioner Sidoti may fancy themselves heros, but in fact they are only apologists and appeasers of a brutal government that will ape civilized behavior to foreigners, but is more vicious than animals when dealing with their own people.

Downer, in blustery Aussie style, hopes to gain two advantages from his ill-considered initiative: political credibility as a problem-solving diplomat, and perhaps commercial credibility with his country's corporate community.

To secure his advantage, however, Downer rides roughshod over the existing democratic and human rights institutions in Burma, notably the NLD and the elected parliamentarians.  

These groups have the expressed mandate of the Burmese people, but Downer is convinced that he knows better than the Burmese what is good for them.  Perhaps he feels, like General Khin Nyunt, that the Burmese are not yet ready for democracy, unlike their brothers in Australia.



At 12:23 AM 9/23/99 +0900, TIN KYI wrote:
>Kyodo News
>SYDNEY, Sept. 22 
>Suu Kyi urges Australia to support Myanmar democracy
>
>    Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has appealed to the
>Australian government to use its unique position as a Western
>democracy in Asia to promote democratization in Myanmar.
>     In a video message smuggled out of Myanmar and shown to 
>parliamentarians in Canberra on Wednesday, the Nobel Peace Prize 
>laureate expressed concern that Australia's foreign policy was not 
>consistent with the aims of the pro-democracy movement.