The United States on Monday called on the European Union and other democracies to consider imposing a full import ban on Myanmar to pressure the country’s military junta to release opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
The call came as the political leadership in Myanmar was riven with tensions amid rumours Prime Minister General Khin Nyunt may have been removed or arrested, according to sources in Thailand and Myanmar.
Khin Nyunt was seen as favouring talks with Aung San Suu Kyi.
The United States wants greater cooperation among the international community to support the Myanmar people’s desire for democracy and national reconciliation, said state department spokesperson Richard Boucher.
He welcomed the European Union’s recent announcement of new sanctions on Myanmar following the junta’s failure to meet the EU’s October 7 deadline for Aung San Suu Kyi’s release and completion of concrete steps toward democratisation.
The EU’s new sanctions, including a widening of a visa blacklist of Myanmar’s top leaders and senior army officers as well as their families and clamping down on investment, underlined the international community’s continued desire to see ”positive and peaceful” change in Myanmar, Boucher said.
The United States wanted the EU to ”move quickly to final adoption and implementation of the sanctions,” he said.
”Should Burma continue to deny its citizens basic human rights and freedoms, we urge the EU and other democracies in the international community to consider further strengthening sanctions, including placing a comprehensive import ban on Burmese products,” Boucher said.
The United States has been imposing for several years a ban on all imports from Myanmar, previously known as Burma. It also has frozen the regime’s assets and imposed a ban on granting of travel visas to top regime members and new US investment inside Myanmar.
The junta has detained Aung San Suu Kyi for more than a year and clamped down on her National League for Democracy (NLD) party, which won overwhelmingly in 1990 elections but was not allowed to govern.
Myanmar has been run by the military since a 1962 coup.
”We are deeply disappointed that the Burmese junta continues to ignore the demands of the international community and their own citizens for democracy and the free exercise of fundamental human rights,” Boucher said.
The situation in Myanmar, he said, has further deteriorated since a brutal attack on Aung San Suu Kyi and members and supporters of her NLD party in May last year.
Boucher said the United States remained ”deeply concerned” by the continued detention of Aung San Suu Kyi and more than 1 000 other political prisoners and the failure of the junta to permit the NLD to open its offices nationwide and operate freely.
It also slammed the junta for disallowing full participation of ethnic minority and NLD representatives in a convention to formulate a national Constitution, and for alleged abuses in several southern states in Myanmar.
As pressure mounted from the international community, Myanmar’s junta has banned an album by some of the world’s top artistes demanding Aung San Suu Kyi’s freedom.
”According to a radio station that beams news inside Burma, we just learned that For the Lady was banned by the ruling dictators,” said Jeremy Woodrum, founder of non-profit group US Campaign For Burma.
U2, Pearl Jam, Coldplay, Sting, REM, Travis, Indigo Girls and Matchbox Twenty and top artists including Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton had planned to launch For the Lady on October 26.
”The fact that Burma’s dictators are threatened by songs from Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Sting, and others, shows how weak they truly are,” Woodrum said.
”Just as rock ‘n roll helped tear down the Iron Curtain, it can help bring freedom to Burma,” he said. – Sapa-AFP