40 Burmese given prison terms of up to 65 years, blogger gets 20 years for posting a cartoon

south-east asia | repression / prisoners | non-anarchist press Monday November 24, 2008 22:34 by Thein Win - Free Burma Campaign (South Africa) burmamtk at iafrica dot com 072 838 6999

South Africa must change its policy & actively support the struggle for change

FREE BURMA CAMPAIGN (SOUTH AFRICA) MEDIA RELEASE

40 Burmese activists including Min Ko Naing given prison terms of up to 65 years
Burmese blogger gets 20 years for posting a cartoon

South Africa must change its policy & actively support the struggle for change

21 November 2008

The Free Burma Campaign condemns in the strongest possible terms the horrific jail sentences recently given to activists in Burma for their role in last year’s “Saffron Revolution” [Popular peaceful uprising led by Buddhist monks, initiated by peaceful protest against fuel hikes by '88 generation students]. More than 20 of the activists have in the past week received sentences of 65 years each in trials held inside Rangoon’s notorious Insein prison. The public, including families, were not allowed to attend the trials and not allowed to defend themselves.

We call on the South African government urgently to change its policy towards the military rulers. The astonishingly long sentences send a clear message to the international community that the military Burmese regime will not release Aung San Suu Kyi, only imprisoned Nobel Peace Laureate nor any of the more than 2000 political prisoners. It clearly means that the regime will not consider the dialogue repeatedly appealed for by the international community, including the UN Security Council.

Now is definitely the time for the South African Government to consider changing its stance towards Burma (Myanmar). The people of Burma have been suffering under military oppression for four decades [since 1962] and we were shocked last year when the South African Government, ostensibly a “champion of human rights”, voted for the generals in a Security Council decision in January 2007, then abstained in the General Assembly in a vote on human rights in Burma in December 2007. This was despite a public announcement from Foreign Affairs that South Africa was “concerned about human rights in Burma”.

“Turning a blind eye to oppression abroad is “a betrayal of our own noble past”, argues Archbishop Desmond Tutu. “If others had used the arguments we are using today when we asked them for their support against apartheid we might still have been unfree” he continued.

The Free Burma Campaign, South Africa calls for the South African Government to a) fundamentally shift its own policy towards Burma in order to shame and isolate the junta and join the progressive forces globally that are doing the same; and b) actively support the Burmese struggle for democracy and liberation and publicly place pressure on junta for release of all political prisoners, instead of providing political/diplomatic cover to the totally discredited junta and turning a blind eye to the systematic oppression of political opponents.

See http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=14614
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7721589.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7721271.stm
See also: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/country_profiles/1300082.stm