Kaladan News

Date: Tuesday, May 4, 2004

Arakan People Welcomes US Congress’s Renewal of Sanction on Burma

Chittagong, May 04: Arakan people welcome congressional leaders for renewal of sanction on Burma placed on Burma’s military regime in July of last year, said a NLD member inside Arakan, who declined to mention his name.

The resolution led by Powerful Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in the Senate.The top Democrat on the International Relations Committee Tom Lantos (D-CA) and Peter King (R-NY) in the House of Representatives, would maintain a ban on all imports from the southeast Asian country.

Last year, US House of Representatives passed sanctions on 28^th July, one month after the senate approved the move. It voted 418-2 to ban imports from Burma, where pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Su Kyi has been detained by the Burmese military ruling regime since Depeyin massacre of May 30, 2003.

The law froze the assets of the regime in the United States, installed a ban on transaction with US financial institutions, widened a ban on travel to the US by leaders of the military regime, and banned all imports from the country.

The push by Congress follows the European Union’s renewal of its sanctions on Burma on April 27^th 2004.

A prominent Rohingya leader said, " The US moves is tremendous for the whole people of the country."

The military leaders of Burma have engaged in decades of attacks on minorities, ethnic cleansing and systematic rape. This is not a case where engagement--- political, social, or even economic will work.

When asked a schoolteacher, he said, " We will face some difficulties for sanction but SPDC will face many problems to run the country."

Recently, the junta has released two opposition leaders amid speculation on it might also free pro-democracy leader Aung San Su Kyi from house arrest.

Under the intense international pressure after the attack, in August of 2003, the military regime proposed a "road map to democracy", in which it pledged to re-convene a "National Convention" and bring out genuine change. However, international observers have called the convention a sham, since the regime’s handpicked delegates represent military interests and the convention includes rules bar public debate.

According to the US State Department and some NGOs, the SPDC has imprisoned over 1,500 political prisoners. They also uses rape as a weapon of War. ##

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