Address From Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
General Secretary, National League For Democracy
To The United Nations Commission On Human Rights
MARCH, 1998
The case for human rights is hardly one that should need to be argued, and yet again and again we have to appeal to the world to think of human rights, to remind them that it is pertinent to all human beings, not just to a few of us in a few underprivileged countries. The case of human rights is the case of human dignity, human security, of human beings. Because we are all human beings I think we should all care about whether or not there are people in this world who are suffering because we cannot live as human beings. Repressed human beings are not the same as those who are free and secure. Something happens to us when we are repressed, when we are intimidated, when we have to worry every day about our security.
The case for Burma is not just for one country. It is the case for all those who are suffering under authoritarian regimes. The sufferings of our people are the sufferings of all those whose human dignity is not protected by the law. I hope that in arguing the case for Burma, I shall be arguing the case for all peoples in the world who are suffering from the violation of human rights.
Since 1992, the United Nations General Assembly has been passing resolutions on the human rights situation in Burma . These resolutions call inter alia for the early democratization of the country; for dialogue between the military regime, the democratic forces and the ethnic nationalities; for the release of political prisoners; for the right of the people of Burma to take part in the political process of the country; for the creation of conditions that will enable refugees in neighboring countries to return to Burma. None of these terms have been implemented by the military government. We think it is time that the international community took a greater interest in getting the terms of the resolutions implemented. We are duly grateful to the United Nations and to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights for making public the human rights violations on Burma, for passing these resolutions that if implemented will bring about such a great change that would be of such great benefit to our peoples. But resolutions are not enough. Resolutions should be implemented.
Last year the deputy home minister called in certain members of the central executive committee of the NLD . Now, this occasion was used as an excuse by those who want to support the present military regime as a reason for saying that the situation has improved, that there has been progress towards dialogue. I would like to emphasize that that occasion had nothing to do with dialogue at all. The deputy home minister in effect summoned members of our CEC, started off by saying that they were a military government and they were not thinking of giving democracy yet, and then started giving our CEC members a good scolding, reprimanding them for bringing out the kind of statements that were not favorable to the government. Of course we are a political party, we have our work to do, we must bring out statements about the situation as we see it. It is our responsibility. The deputy home minister also made a not so veiled threat to our CEC members to the effect that should we continue to bringing out such statements, action could be taken against us. We are quite prepared to face whatever we have to face in the line of carrying out our responsibility.
There are those who ask whether the transition from SLORC to SPDC has meant an improvement in the human rights situation. As far as I can see there has been no improvement at all . In fact I could say that I am inclined to think that things have even got worse. There have been a number of arrests since 1998. I think that the numbers of those arrested must be very close to one hundred if not more since the beginning of 1998, and we are still at the beginning of March . Of those who have been arrested some have been tried arbitrarily and given long prison sentences . None of them have been given access to their families or to their legal advisers .
I would first like to talk about the rights of which the National League for Democracy, my political party, is deprived. At the moment the NLD is the most active political party in Burma, but I use the word active with some caution as we are hardly permitted any activities at all. We are not allowed any of the basic rights of political parties the world over. We have no freedom of assembly, no freedom of expression, no freedom of speech, no freedom of publication . The National League for Democracy is not allowed to print anything, it is not allowed to publish anything, it’s
not allowed to operate a Gestetner machine, it’s not allowed to operate a copying machine, it’s not allowed to own an international direct dialing telephone line, we do not have a satellite dish so that we can listen to the news from CNN and other international media.
We are restricted in every way. We are not even allowed to hold meetings in our own offices . And there is a terrible campaign on to shut down our offices all over the country . There have been arrests of our Members of Parliament . Some of them have been forced to resign, ordinary members of our party have been forced to resign . I think that there must be about between a thousand and two thousand political prisoners in Burma today, most of them are members of the National League for Democracy .
What is it that frightens this government so much? Why are they so intent on these repressive measures? Why are they so intent on depriving our people of their basic rights? A country where there are no basic rights is a country where a people cannot be secure. And here we come to the question of refugees. Because this is a country where we do not enjoy security, there are many refugees from Burma who are a burden to our neighbors . We accept that refugees are a burden. We do not want our people to be a burden to our neighbors but when conditions in our country are such that our people can enjoy neither political nor economic security, the problem of refugees is inevitable. And I would like to appeal to our neighbors on humanitarian grounds to do whatever they can for our refugees, and also to the international community to do what they can to make the lot of our refugees a little bit better.
Roughly there are two kinds of refugees: political refugees and economic refugees. Political refugees are fleeing from political persecution and in political persecution one must also include the persecution of the ethnic nationalities. There is now a lot of hostility between the Burmese and the ethnic nationalities, not because the Burmese as a people are doing anything now to the ethnic nationalities but because the ethnic nationalities are suffering under this government, which they see as a Burmese government . So everything that they suffer they feel as something imposed on them by the Burmese racial group. This does not all go well for the future of our country.
A lot of our ethnic nationalities are fleeing from injustice, not just from something as simple as forced labor, some of them are fleeing from forced labor , not just from something as simple as even arrest and interrogation. Sometimes they are fleeing for their lives. They are fleeing that they might not be killed, that they might not be tortured, that they might not be deprived of all their goods . It is quite common in places where there have been fighting between certain ethnic nationality groups and the government troops for innocent villagers to be penalized in the worst possible way. Whole villages have been destroyed, people have been tortured and killed, families have been separated . There are families which have been separated forever because there is no way they can ever get news again of each other, and of course in the process some of them die.
Unless there is rule of law in this country, unless there is a system of government which will guarantee the people the basic right to life – the very, very basic right to life - there will be a continuing stream of refugees fleeing across our borders. These are the political refugees. We can talk about such things as political prisoners who have been ill-treated and who after they are released from prison decide that they cannot remain in this country, we can talk about people who flee the country because they think that they will be arrested soon for certain political activities, but the worst cases are the ones I mentioned earlier - those who are fleeing for their lives. And, we would like the international community to be aware of the fact that lack of political rights in Burma means that many of our people cannot tell how long they will be allowed to live under these circumstances.
As to the economic refugees, they have to go to try to scrape together a living across the border, because they cannot find any way of keeping themselves and their families alive on this side of the border. This is due to the economic problems of Burma . The present regime has had a decade in which to try to resolve the economic problems of this country. The last few months have proved that not only have they not been able to resolve the economic problems of the country, they seem to have created more economic problems . The kind of economic policies that they adopted when they came into power have resulted in a very small, very wealthy elite, while the general public became poorer and poorer. This makes not only for economic malaise, it also makes for social discontent, and social discontent in the long run means instability and instability is a threat to peace.
It is difficult to select what to talk about when we bring up the case of human rights violations in Burma - there’s so many violations of so many kinds - but I think many of these have been made known to the international community by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, by other human rights organizations, by NGOs and by those who are working for democracy in Burma. We are working for democracy in Burma, not because we think that democracy is a magic word that will resolve all the problems of our country, we are working for democracy because we understand that democracy is a system which believes in the protection of the basic human rights of the people.
Unless our people enjoy basic human rights we will not enjoy peace or prosperity in this country. And unless there is peace and prosperity in this country we will always provide a threat to the peace and prosperity of this region. In this day and age we cannot isolate any country. We cannot say that we are not going to interfere in the internal affairs of a country because it’s got nothing to do with us. It has something to do with everybody. Those who claim that they will not interfere in the internal affairs of Burma do not hesitate to be involved economically in Burma. As long as they are involved economically, how can they say that they are not interfering in the internal affairs of our country ? If they are prepared to engage economically with our country, then they must also be prepared to do what they can to help us resolve our political problems. There is no way that we can resolve our economic problems without a political situation.
I would like to remind the international community that democratic elections were held in 1990, that was eight years ago. The people of Burma had the courage and the integrity to vote for the kind of government that they wanted. The elections were free and fair but the run up to the elections were not the kind of conditions that you would expect in democracies. There were many restrictions on the National League for Democracy. U Tin Oo, the chairman of the League, and myself, the General Secretary, were placed under arrest a year before the elections took place.
Many of our colleagues were also placed under arrest, there were many cases of harassment, we were restricted in what we were allowed to do, we were not free to campaign as we pleased , but yet the people of Burma voted for us overwhelmingly not because they wanted the NLD as such, but because they wanted a party that would protect their democratic rights.
The United Nations General Assembly’s resolution calls for the present government of Burma to respect the will of the people as expressed through the elections of 1990 . The will of the people, as expressed through the elections of 1990, was that they wanted the NLD, they wanted to give the NLD the responsibility of restoring democratic government to Burma. So the international community should do what they can to help implement the terms of the General Assembly resolution by helping the people of Burma to realize their will which is to help us to achieve the early democratization of Burma.
I would like to conclude by thanking the United Nations Commission for Human Rights and all those NGO’s who have done so much for the human rights situation in Burma. It does make a difference that the international community is keeping an eye - I hope more than one eye - on Burma and the situation of human rights in Burma. I hope that you will continue to do so. I hope that you will persevere in spite of all of the obstacles that are in your way, because it does help us a great deal.
Thank you.
(For a copy of the full transcript with footnotes please send an email to altsean@ksc.th.com)
