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| Southeast Asia |
| First Lady Visits Burmese Refugees |
| 2008-08-09 |
| With rain falling steadily outside, first lady Laura Bush sat down inside a small hut near the Thai border with Burma on Thursday and invited a group of refugees who fled one of the world's most repressive governments to tell her what they "would like the people of the world to know" about their situation. "Our dream is to go home," said one refugee, Mahn Htun Htun. "But there is no peace and democracy in Burma -- and it's impossible to go home." For the past two years, Bush has made freedom in Burma a focus of her official duties as first lady. On Thursday, she ventured as close to the closed country as she has ever been, visiting a muddy, rain-soaked refugee camp and medical clinic a few miles from the border -- part of a White House campaign to raise public pressure on the military junta. President Bush played a supporting role. He had lunch at the U.S. ambassador's residence in Bangkok with some Burmese dissidents and told them that the "American people care deeply about the people of Burma, and we pray for the day in which the people will be free." He also spoke about Burma in a radio interview heard inside that country. "Together, we seek an end to tyranny in Burma," the president said in a policy address in Bangkok. "The noble cause has many devoted champions, and I happen to be married to one of them." Laura Bush and daughter Barbara made a seven-hour swing to the rugged border region, to which about 140,000 Burmese refugees, many of them members of persecuted ethnic minorities, have fled. |
| Posted by:Fred |