Burma opposition downcast over UN visit

By DVB admin

Opposition activists and politicians yesterday lamented last week’s "fruitless" visit to Burma by the UN rapporteur on human rights, Tomas Ojea Quintana.

Quintana was denied a meeting with imprisoned opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi during the five-day visit, despite being allowed to hold talks with the recently released opposition vice-chairman, Tin Oo.

Observers have echoed Quintana’s reflections on the apparent intransigence of the Burmese junta, and said that the visit failed to reap any concrete results. It coincided with the high-profile sentencing on Wednesday of a monk who had helped victims of cyclone Nargis in 2008.

Bo Kyi, joint secretary of Assistant Association for Political Prisoners-Burma (AAPP), said that the trip was "fruitless" and that the junta’s failure to acknowledge the presence of political prisoners in the country meant that it was unlikely any would be release prior to elections this year.

Quintana told ABC Radio in Australia today that "there is no sign, no indication that the government is willing to respect human rights and in that sense the election won’t be acceptable".

The spokesperson for Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party, Nyan Win, said however that the trip "could not bring a change to the human rights situation in Burma overnight".

"We can consider that there are benefits if the UN special rapporteur has learnt more about the human rights situation in the country and thus can pass his knowledge on to the world," he said.

His views were echoed by lawyer Min Lwin, from the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), who said that Quintana’s findings could be used to inform the next UN Human Rights Council meeting in March.

Tight restrictions on the outflow of information from Burma has often left the international community in the dark about the scale of human rights violations in the country.

During the trip Quintana also met with members of the government-backed National Unity Party, leaders of ethnic ceasefire groups, and the ruling junta’s labour and liaison minister Aung Kyi.

Visits were also made to three prisons, two in Burma’s remote western Arakan state, and the other Rangoon’s notorious Insein prison, where the majority of the country’s 2,100 political prisoners are kept.

Reference:

This is from DVB (Democratic Voice of Burma) by the admin.

My opinion:

It is indeed true that international aids are just fruitless though they might be helpful a bit. It is also needed that Burmese civilians needs to make efforts to get democracy. Most of the duty is Burmese civilians'. They also shouldn't just rely on international aids only.