British Government Defends Burma Reforms: Burma Campaign UK Responds

By Burma Campaign UK • January 27, 2015

This briefing paper responds in detail to the British government’s misleading claims and the selective use of information that it uses to defend Burma’s reform process and its own trade-led policy.

In November 2014, Aung San Suu Kyi said that for the past two years, Burma’s reform process had stalled. President Obama said that there had been backtracking of reforms. The UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Burma has also said there has been backsliding. However, when asked in Parliament, British Ministers refused to accept that Burma’s reform process was stalled.

In response, Burma Campaign UK asked supporters to email the British Prime Minister David Cameron, calling on him to admit reforms have stalled, to drop trade promotion as the British government’s top priority, and return to putting human rights first. The action is on our website is here.

On 8^th January 2015 Foreign Office Minister Hugo Swire MP published a letter responding to the emails to the Prime Minister. This briefing paper contains a line by line response to that letter and exposes how, in this letter, the British government talks up positives, plays down or ignores negatives, and deliberately attempts to mislead the reader in order to cover up their lack of action on key issues.

Read the Briefing Paper here