The challenge of Burma
PRESIDENT BUSH embarks this Tuesday on a trip to Asia that will include visits to Japan, China, Mongolia, and South Korea. In his travels and his encounters with Asian-Pacific leaders he will have a rare chance to demonstrate that his oft-declared preference for democracy in the greater Middle East is not merely a geopolitical ploy limited to one area of the world.
If Bush wishes to show he is as concerned with fostering democracy in Asia as he has been in Lebanon, Iraq, or Egypt, he will lobby the 21 members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders' Meeting he will be attending to back a move at the United Nations to have the Security Council take up the issue of Burma and the depradations of that country's military dictatorship.
This is a cause that Asia's democracies, particularly Japan and the Philippines -- currently rotating Security Council members -- ought to embrace. Those that are reluctant to do so, whether because of trade ties with Burma's junta, rivalry with China, or a self-deluding belief that stability is synonymous with the status quo, need to be shamed into acting in solidarity with the people of Burma.
In a 1990 election, the party of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi won 82 percent of the seats in Burma's parliament. The junta refused to honor the results of that election, and the generals unleashed a wave of repression that has caused hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee into neighboring countries. The ruling military is responsible for extra-judicial executions, torture, rape, the destruction of thousands of villages of ethnic minorities, and extensive use of forced labor. Moreover, the junta continues to hold Suu Kyi under house arrest and more than a thousand political prisoners in harsh conditions.
If nine of the Security Council's 15 members vote to place Burma on its provisional agenda, the United Nations can press for democracy and national reconciliation in Burma, as it has done in many other countries -- most of which are less repressive than Burma and less injurious to their neighbors. For refugees are not the only export flowing across Burma's borders. Heroin, methamphetamine, and HIV/AIDS spread along the heroin trails also emanate from this enormous prison-state created by the Burmese junta.
It may be understandable that China, a trading partner and military supplier of the junta, does not want the United Nations to be hectoring the generals to release Suu Kyi and allow a genuine democratic evolution. China, not being a democracy, maintains cozy relations with some of the world's worst regimes. But Japan has no excuse, and neither does the Philippines. Bush should not miss this chance to show Asians that the United States is not selective in its backing for democracy and democrats.
