June 3, 2003

Mr. President, every so often a clarifying moment in international affairs
reminds us of the stakes involved in a particular conflict, and of our moral obligation to stand with those who risk their lives for the principles of freedom. The violent crackdown against Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters over the weekend underscores the brutal and unreconstructed character of Burma's dictatorship. The assault should remind democrats everywhere that we must actively support her struggle to deliver the human rights and freedom of a people long denied them by an oppressive military regime.

The arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi following a coordinated, armed attack
against her and her supporters is a reminder to the world that Burma's
military junta has neither legitimacy nor limits on its power to crush
peaceful dissent. The junta insists it stepped in to restore order
following armed clashes between members of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy and unnamed opponents. In fact, the regime's forces had been harassing Suu Kyi and the NLD for months. The junta's Union Solidarity Development Association orchestrated and staged last weekend's attack, killing at least 70 of her supporters and injuring Suu Kyi herself, perhaps seriously. Credible reports suggest that the regime's thugs targeted Suu Kyi personally. She is now being held incommunicado by Burmese military intelligence; her party offices have been closed; many of its activists are missing; and universities have been shut down. After having spent most of the last 14 years under house arrest, Ms. Suu Kyi is, one again, a political prisoner.

Aung San Suu Kyi is one of the world's most courageous champions of
freedom. I join advocates of a free Burma everywhere in expressing outrage at her unwarranted detention and call for her immediate, unconditional release, and the freedom to travel and speak throughout her country.

Closing party offices, shuttering universities, and detaining Aung San Suu
Kyi and senior members of her party in the name of "protecting" her
demonstrate how estranged the junta is from its own people, and how potent are Suu Kyi's appeals for democratic change in a nation that resoundingly endorsed her in democratic elections 13 years ago. The junta's decision to release her from house arrest a year ago, and to permit her to speak and travel within tightly circumscribed limits, appeared to reflect the generals ' calculation that her popular appeal had diminished, and that perhaps her fighting spirit had flagged. They could not have been more wrong.

Aung San Suu Kyi remains the legitimately elected and overwhelmingly
popular leader of her country. Even though she was under house arrest in 1990, her party captured 82 percent of the vote, shocking the generals. Neither the huge majority of the Burmese people who voted for the NLD nor the international community have forgotten how Burma's junta rejected the election results, nor how the regime's forces massacred its own people at a democratic rally two years earlier. We have not forgotten the many political prisoners who remain in Burma's jails, or the repression Burma's people have endured for decades. The assault on Burma's free political future at the hands of the regime last weekend has reminded us of what we already knew: the junta cannot oversee the reform and opening of Burma, for it remains the biggest obstacle to the freedom and prosperity of the Burmese people. Burma cannot change as long as the junta rules, without restraint or remorse.

Despite these obvious truths, of which we have been reminded again this
week, some countries have chosen to pursue policies of political and
commercial engagement with the government in Rangoon on the grounds that working with and through the junta would have a more significant
liberalizing effect than isolating and sanctioning it. ASEAN admitted Burma in 1997, Beijing has enjoyed warm relations with Rangoon, and most countries trade with it: only the United States and Europe impose mild sanctions against the regime. Proponents of engagement pointed to the nascent dialogue between Aung San Suu Kyi and the regime, and her release from house arrest last May, as indicators that perhaps external influence was having some beneficial effect on the dictatorship. But advocates of engagement have little to show for it following last weekend's assault on the democrats.

Burma's junta must understand quite clearly that it will not enjoy business as usual following its brutal attack on Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD. It is time for the international community to acknowledge that the status quo serves nobody's interests except those of the regime: Burma's people suffer, its neighbors are embarrassed, companies cannot do the kind of business they would with a free and developing Burma, the drug lords flourish in a vacuum of governance, and the situation inside the country grows more unstable as the regime's misrule increasingly radicalizes and impoverishes its people.

No country or leader motivated by the welfare of the Burmese people, a
desire for regional stability and prosperity, or concern for Burma's place
among nations can maintain that rule by the junta serves these interests. I find it hard to believe that any democratic government would stand by the junta as it takes Burma on a forced march back in time. Yet this morning, when asked about the weekend's assault, the Japanese Foreign Minister denied that the situation in Burma was getting worse, said progress is being made toward democratization, and announced that Japan has no intention of changing its policy on Burma. Music to the junta's ears, perhaps, but I believe friends of the Burmese people must take a radically different, and principled, approach to a problem that kind words will only exacerbate.

The world cannot stand by as the ruination of this country continues any
farther. Free Burma's leaders, and her people, will remember which nations stood with them in their struggle against oppression, and which nations seemed to side with their oppressors.

American and international policy towards Burma should reflect our
conviction that oppression and impunity must come to an end, and that the regime must move towards a negotiated settlement with Aung San Suu Kyi that grants her a leading and irreversible political role culminating in free and fair national elections. If it does not, the regime will not be able to manage the transition, when it does come, for it will come without its consent.
I believe the United States should immediately expand the visa ban against Burmese officials to include all members of the Union Solidarity Development Association, which organized the attack against Aung San Suu Kyi's delegation last weekend. The Administration should also immediately issue an executive order freezing the U.S. assets of Burmese leaders. U.N. special envoy Razali Ismail should not travel to Burma as planned this week unless he has assurances from the regime that he will be able to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi.

Congress should promptly consider legislation banning Burmese imports into the United States, and the Administration should encourage the European Union to back up its commitment to human rights in Burma with concrete steps in this direction. The U.S. and the E.U. together account for over 50 percent of Burma's exports and therefore enjoy considerable leverage against the regime. The United States alone absorbs between 20 and 25 percent of Burma's exports. Consideration of a U.S. import ban should help focus attention in Rangoon on the consequences of flagrantly violating the human rights of the Burmese people and their chosen leaders. In coordination with a new U.S. initiative, an E.U. move in the direction of punitive trade sanctions would make the regime's continuing repression difficult if not impossible to sustain.

The junta's latest actions are a desperate attempt by a decaying regime to stall freedom's inevitable progress, in Burma and across Asia. They will fail as surely as Aung San Suu Kyi's campaign for a free Burma will one day succeed.