Editorial
Junta should heed global opinion on Suu Kyi
UN must get tougher with Myanmar
Ban Ki-moon has put the situation in perspective. He has described his visit to Myanmar a very tough mission. No one will take issue with him here, for the matter he has uppermost on his mind is the detention and ongoing trial of the country's democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. With global opinion getting deeply sensitive over the continued incarceration of Suu Kyi, it was inevitable that the United Nations would get a little more involved in the matter. Indeed, the world body has been involved in the Suu Kyi issue, as the repeated visits to Myanmar over the past few years by its special envoy Ibrahim Gambari has demonstrated. Now that it is the UN secretary general who has felt the urgency of making his own trip to Yangon, it should dawn on the military junta led by General Than Shwe that a continued brushing aside of opinion on Suu Kyi's circumstances does the country little good.
We at this newspaper are supportive of Ban Ki-moon's mission. That is because of our belief that Aung San Suu Kyi deserves a fairer deal than what she has come by so far. For the past fourteen years, she has been in house arrest; and for the past couple of months she has been in the notorious Insein prison on charges of having violated the terms of her detention because an American happened to swim across a lake to see her. Given the worldwide support that the detained politician has enjoyed since 1990, when she led her National League for Democracy to a resounding victory at the general elections (the results were subsequently repudiated by the junta), it is only proper and ethical that Suu Kyi be set free. It is in the interest of Myanmar's future that the junta should engage in a dialogue with her about turning the country on to a healthy, democratic course. At a time when democracy has been supplanting authoritarian rule across the globe, it makes sense to argue that Myanmar's military rulers should heed global opinion and move toward negotiating a way out of the crisis with Ms. Suu Kyi. Their failure to be responsive to the contemporary world is deeply saddening for the people of Myanmar as also for people elsewhere.
The people of Bangladesh have always striven for meaningful and productive relations with Myanmar despite the issues which sometimes come between the two countries. Since Dhaka believes that the voice of the people is eventually the voice that matters, it expects that a similar perception will soon define politics in Yangon. Meanwhile, we wish the UN secretary general good luck on his difficult mission.
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