The extension of the house arrest of Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi by the Myanmese military junta, which will keep her confined to her residence for a fifth straight year, must be condemned in all ASEAN, Asian and world capitals.

Myanmar’s membership in ASEAN must be seriously reviewed as the continued detention of Aung San Suu Kyi marks the abysmal failure of the 10-year ASEAN experiment to influence the Myanmar military junta to be a responsible member of international community when Myanmar was admitted into ASEAN as a member in 1997 in the teeth of regional and international opposition.

At that time, the rationale was that “constructive engagement” with the Myanmese military junta was the only option for ASEAN nations to influence Yangon and wean it from its ruthless and repressive form of dictatorship as it had proved to be completely impervious to regional and international opinion.

This year 2007 marks the ten-year membership of Myanmar in ASEAN, which is also to celebrate its 40th anniversary.

The blatant defiance of regional and international opinion urging the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, who had spent 11 of the past 17 years in detention, despite the unprecedented Open Letter by 59 former heads of state and government including former Malaysian Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, former Presidents in ASEAN like Corazon Aquino, Fidel Ramos, Abdurrahman Wahid, Megawati Sukarno is testimony that the Myanmar military junta is not prepared to make any concession to become a responsible member of the international community.

In the circumstances, the other ASEAN nations must seriously consider whether they should continue to allow Myanmar to be a millstone around the neck of ASEAN, bringing disrepute to the regional organization, or whether they should face up seriously to the option to suspend or expel Myanmar from ASEAN.

The cause of democratization in Burma is a hard nut to crack and it is so easy to give way to despair as there does not seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel after years and decades of sacrifice and struggle by the people of Burma for democracy, freedom and justice, with many tempted to dismiss it as a “lost cause”.

Burma has in fact been described as the world’s longest-running civil war that has lasted nearly 60 years and sent millions fleeing into Thailand and displaced 500,000 people in Myanmar — a period that saw the tragedy of the transformation of once Asia’s rich country into a basketcase.

Developments in Myanmar can both be interpreted as signs of weakness or consolidation of the repressive, ruthless and mendacious military junta, whether it be the abrupt relocation of the national capital from Yangon to Nay Pyi Taw, about 390 kilometres north of Yangon in November 2005 or the construction of four vast hydro-power dams on the Salween River which have already destroyed 232 villagers in the country’s resource-rich east, drove 82,000 people from their homes, triggering a new wave of forced labour and devastating Salween’s ecosystem.

National and international attention is now focused on the date next week, May 27, when the latest period of detention of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi ends after having spent more than 11 of the past 17 years under some form of detention.

Would the Myanmese military junta, which has ruled Myanmar in various guises since 1962, ignored international calls for her release on May 27 and extend her detention as happened last year?

Last week, 59 former heads of state and government took the unprecedented step of issuing an Open Letter to the Myanmar military junta, calling for the immediate release of the Burmese Opposition leader and the world’s only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi. Read the rest of this entry »

At the end of March, a delegation of Members of Parliament from Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore including MP for Seputeh Teresa Kok and MP for Permatang Pauh Datin Seri Dr. Wan Azizah went to the Thai-Burma border to visit Mae La refugee camp and meet with some of those who have been forced to flee the abuses and the ravages of civil war in Burma.

For more than fifty years, civil war has cast its dark shadow on this beautiful country. In the course of the past ten years, about 3,000 villages have been destroyed in eastern parts of the country and hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee. Burma is now the third largest producer of refugees in the world, after Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thailand has received the largest number of refugees and migrants from Burma. But an increasing number of Burmese are also coming to Malaysia. At the end of March, a seven year old girl, Dally, went missing in Cheras on the eve of the day she and her family were to leave for resettlement in the U.S.

Malaysia and other governments in ASEAN must take responsibility for the protection of refugees from Burma. They share in the blame for having allowed the situation to drag on for so many decades.

The Malaysian Parliamentary Caucus on Myanmar calls on the Malaysian government to ensure that the authorities act promptly in the murder of Dally and to adopt policies and practices that will ensure that future crimes, not only of this nature, towards unprotected refugee children do not recur.

However, we all know that the root causes of the refugee and migration problems from Burma lies with the Burmese regime. If the junta does not stop its abuses, end the civil war and solves the country’s political and economic problems, refugees will continue to flee the country.

If we are to provide lasting protection to the people of Burma, this tragedy cannot be allowed to continue. We call on the Malaysian government to plan an active role in order for ASEAN to take strong steps at a regional and international level to stop the abuses that are forcing people to flee their homes and that are splitting up families. Read the rest of this entry »