Announcement from Overseas National Students’ Organization of Burma

By Overseas National Students’ Organization of Burma • June 19, 2011

Today is the 66th birthday of Nobel peace laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi who had been under house arrest for more than fifteen years in total but is now thankfully free.

We had our own rights and movements even though Burma was under control of British colonial system for more than 100 years but since the military junta involved and took the power briefly in 1959 and then completely in 1962 the country has completely lost all meaning of human rights and democracy.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi led the way and put the country on to international stage by following non violent Gandhian format and helped Burma towards becoming a democratic country. But she has been kept under house arrest for most of the past two decades. Her party, the National League for Democracy, won an overwhelming victory in 1990 elections but was denied power by the military, which has ruled since 1962.

In 2008, military junta released its proposed constitution for the country as a tool for continuing military control of the country and held an unjust and fraudulent election in which for example millions of people in rural/border areas were denied the right to vote.

ONSOB considers the whole of Burmese people in the country are already lost and still denied basic human rights. We also want you all to know what we believe needs to be done to achieve a modern, inclusive, forward-looking democracy. The system and the power that sustains it is still strong in spite of the fact that the leaders have changed from military uniform into civilian dress. At one time we thought that we should be patient and work with the regime to achieve our goals for Burma. Now we realise that we will never get what we want unless we do what is necessary ourselves to change the system.

We should take immediate action instead of waiting and believing that democracy will come when the time is right and we need to work with all Burmese people to decide what we can do to achieve democracy in Burma. Every individual has their own responsibilities to bring human rights to all of Burma:

To dislodge this inferior so called ‘new government.’
To pressure the ‘window-dressing’ government to allow Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to achieve national reconciliation freely and safely.
Any solution/programme must respect, accept and declare the results of People’s Election of 1990
Call an immediate meeting between all the opposition groups, the army and NLD to decide the way forward
Form a new modern developed democratic system to replace military rule (in civilian clothes)
Make goodwill with neighboring countries to help develop Burma’s economy

For further information, please contact:

Mr. Aung Than Oo (086-776. 9485) Gen. Sec. Overseas National Students’ Organization of Burma (ONSOB)

Other participating organizations:
Burmese Rohingya Association of Thailand (Abdul Kalam, 0896624066, Yunus 0894609160)
Peace for Burma / Thai Free Burma (Julian Pieniazek, [email protected])
Burmese Refugees Helping Body (Naing Tun Lin 0816122923 / 0876972234)

This post is in: Press Release

Announcement from Overseas National Students’ Organization of Burma

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