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Immediately Withdraw Military Regime’s Sanctions upon the People
By All Burma Monks Alliance, 88 Generation Students and All Burma Federation of Student Unions • March 23, 20111. The SPDC military regime is found to be interminably blaming and rebuking sanctions imposed by democratic powers. Similarly, political parties that have contested in 2010 elections as well as ASEAN countries are also echoing the regime’s line in claiming that foreign countries’ sanctions are cause of underdevelopment in Burma.We regard such act of ASEAN countries and those political parties, which have clamored for receiving whatever is available from the regime and expanding space through the parliament, as an attempt to curry favor from the regime for their self-interest and business opportunities.
2. Sanctions by world democracies as a kind of pressure and punishment on the SPDC regime are prompted by SPDC military regime and cronies’ human rights violations, oppression of ethnic minorities, persecution and detention of political activists and abuse of power. They have openly avowed that sanctions would be removed with improvement in human rights situation.
3. Harm to the people by those sanctions upon the SPDC is but negligible. Military junta’s monopoly, oppression and restrictions, mismanagement of country’s natural and human resources for the sake of self-aggrandizement is rendering much worse poverty of incalculable scale on Burmese people
4. World democracies’ sanctions chiefly concern arms embargo, freezing of military junta’s bank transactions and foreign travel, and have nothing to do with the people.
5. Blindly hoping for Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) is like writing on water. There should be prerequisites such as laws truly protecting citizens, right of association and unionization, equal opportunities for local businessmen rather than cronyism as well as a comprehensive market economy instead of a nominal one.People’s opinion must be solicited to decide on using nation’s revenues for the benefit of country and people, and mechanisms must be transparent and accountable.
A law-abiding social environment where free and fair practice of justice flourishes has to be firmly in place.
An environment with no such foundations could not free itself from poverty even if FDI from the whole world poured into the country. Ecological damage, resource depletion, foreign debt serviced for generations, Burmese workers becoming cheapest international slaves on their own soil and other ravages would surely turn up, becoming a national disaster to be wary of.
6. Under-development of our country and livelihood hardships of the people is not due to Western countries’ sanctions as the regime charges. The people unmistakably know that the one and only culprit is the SPDC regime which has wrong political policies intended to perpetuate its military rule, such as not governing fairly under democratic principles but dictating and employing undue authority, having a huge corruption, practicing mismanagement along with vile, inconsistent and procrastinating procedures, expanding its arms and military buildup, seeking nepotism and self-enrichment, and waging a civil war upon ethnic nationalities and entire pro-democracy forces rather than making a political settlement through dialogue.
7. With such fallacious policies and measures, the SPDC regime is imposing sanctions upon the people, nailing them eternally to poverty. That’s why Western countries have adopted sanctions on the regime. Blaming the NLD and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and inciting the people against them could not solve the sanctions problem.
Therefore, only by the SPDC unconditionally and immediately removing sanctions upon the people and starting to build an open and transparent society could result in the one and sure-fire way to remove Western countries’ sanctions upon the SPDC.
8. The life of people suffering from military regime’s sanctions is as follows:
Partial glimpse of people’s life under junta’s sanctions
a. Political activists are languishing in various prisons of Burma, subject to torture. Prison visits are banned for them; Solitary confinement imposed; Political prisoners are banished to faraway prisons so as to sever communications with their families and obstruct family’s support for them.
b. Freedom of legal existence of political parties, unions, civil society organizations for education, health and social welfare has been banned or restricted under unjust laws and decrees.
c. Investigations, studies and assistance by UN agencies such as UN Human Rights Council, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), International Labor Organization (ILO), etc. as well as by international bodies like the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are restricted, rejected or ignored.
d. All peaceful assembly, expression and procession are totally outlawed. Even procession by prayer-chanting monks is brutally suppressed with gunfire. People asking for lowering of consumer prices have been imprisoned.
e. Employment opportunities are restricted. Even applying for mushroom cultivation training course specifies politics-free background. Though the regime forbids civil servants from engaging in politics, it gives army personnel permission to do politics and even the extraordinary right to assume political leadership without getting elected by the people.
f. Freedom of writing, printing, publishing and distribution through news media is restricted with all kinds of unfair regulations. Freedom of news collection is also banned.
g. All artistic creations such as poems and fiction, even including traditional astrology pamphlet and traditional hip-hop chanting for Thingyan (Water Festival) are banned or stringently censored; Dance troupe jokes have to be submitted to the censor board for approval before public performance; Art exhibitions have to obtain approval from censor board; Artistes critical of the regime or not conforming to junta’s fancy are debarred from artistic performance or creations.
h. Welfare services, free education charities, relief and assistance for victims of Cyclones Nargis or Giri and famine in Chin State are harassed, exploited for regime’s political benefits, delayed or outright blocked through unfair laws, procedures or use of unlawful and undue authority.
i. Sermons of Buddhist monks are being restricted or banned with unwarranted regulations, religious monuments and buildings of Christians and Muslims are pulled down arbitrarily and freedom of worship obstructed for other religions.
j. Efforts to preserve and propagate ethnic nationality languages, literature and culture are being discouraged and even prohibited.
k. Peasants’ freedom to cultivate, harvest, ship and sell their produce is banned on whim, lands confiscated and right of farming suspended.
l. Corrupted judicial system giving rise to winning of lawsuits by might of money or power with courts of injustice and community offices blocking true course of justice.
m. Special privileges are granted to a handful of Generals and their cronies while ordinary businesspersons’ opportunities and advancement are discriminated and jammed.
n. Freedom of travel for citizens is restricted with requirement of overnight-staying guest reporting system but citizens may be subject to refusal of staying permit out of deliberate guile. Right of foreign travel as well is not facilitated but subject to various kinds of obstructions with occasional banning of passports.
o. Foreign news agencies’ broadcasts are banned in the army while satellite antennas are not permitted for installation at civilians’ homes so as to shut eyes and ears of the military and the people.
p. Internet users are restricted with many regulations; many websites are banned; connection is slowed down deliberately on important days of political significance; spying measures installed at Internet cafes encroaching on privacy; threatening with the Electronic Law; phone lines are tapped; mails are opened or disposed of.
q. Instead of permitting import of motor vehicles and telephones like any other country in order to let people enjoy them easily and economically, authorities are creating business opportunities for themselves and their cronies by restricting and reselling import permits, leading to high costs for transport and communications.
Such conditions are extracted as example from plentiful hindrances and sanctions imposed on the civilian people by the SPDC military regime in realms of politics, economy, social affairs and culture.
SPDC or election-contesting political parties’ call to Western countries for removal of sanctions upon the SPDC instead of trying to remove sanctions imposed on each other among residents of our country is at odds with reality.
This post is in: Press Release
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