 WASHINGTON - US Congress supporters of MyanmarÂ’s democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi pleaded Friday to keep sanctions on the military regime as a key senator said efforts to isolate the junta had failed. President Barack ObamaÂ’s administration is reviewing strategy on Myanmar, also known as Burma, whose ruling junta has crushed dissent and kept Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for 19 years.
In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 17 members of Congress said they were ‘greatly concerned’ by indications that the United States was considering lifting sanctions on Myanmar. The lawmakers, led by longtime Aung San Suu Kyi champion Joseph Crowley, said that Myanmar’s leader Than Shwe had shown no desire to engage with the world’s only detained Nobel laureate. ‘Than Shwe’s regime continues to perpetuate crimes against humanity and war crimes so severe that Burma has been called ‘Southeast Asia’s Darfur,’‘ they wrote.
| C'mon guys, we're already sucking up to dictators and thugs all over the world. What's one more bunch? |
They noted that Congress approved a law last year subjecting the Myanmar junta to sanctions until it releases all political prisoners and starts dialogue on bringing in democracy. ‘We urge you to join us in standing firmly alongside Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma’s democracy movement,’ they said.
But Jim Webb, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Asia, said the United States needed a more ‘constructive’ policy on Myanmar.
| Jim Webb, as you'll see, is a 'realist' ... |
‘Certainly the way that we approach it now I don’t believe has had the results that people want it to have,’ Webb, a member of Obama’s Democratic Party, told a luncheon at the Council on Foreign Relations. ‘What I think we should be doing in Burma is trying to open up diplomatic avenues where you can have confidence builders... and through that process work toward some way where you can remove sanctions,’ he said.
| So, standing on our moral principles hasn't worked, so let's suck up to the thugs instead in the name of 'progress' ... |
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