The Governing Council of the Inter-Parliamentary Union,

Referring to the case of the above-mentioned members-elect of the Pyithu Hluttaw (People's Assembly) of the Union of Myanmar, as outlined in the report of the Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians (CL/186/12(b)-R.1), and to the resolution adopted at its 185th session (October 2009),

Recalling its long-standing concerns about the complete disregard for the results of the election of 27 May 1990, in which the National League for Democracy (NLD) won 392 of the 485 seats, and about the continued removal from the political process of parliamentarians-elect, notably through arbitrary arrests, prolonged imprisonment, forced resignation from political parties and severe limitations on any kind of political activity; recalling also that in August 2009 Aung San Suu Kyi was initially sentenced to three years in prison with hard labour in a widely criticized trial, that this sentence was immediately commuted to 18 months of house arrest, and that this commuted sentence was upheld on appeal,

Recalling also its previous concerns at the fact that the National Convention, an assembly of members selected by the authorities, drafted a new Constitution giving the military sweeping powers, without allowing a free exchange of opinions and ideas and penalizing any criticism of its work, which was adopted by referendum in May 2008 in a climate of intimidation and that the military authorities, on the basis of that instrument, have announced that elections will take place in 2010,

Considering that on 8 March 2010 the Myanmar authorities, which have repeatedly pledged that these elections will be free and fair, enacted electoral laws, including the Election Commission Law, Political Party Registration Law and the Election Law, which bar most key political figures and some ethnic and students' leaders from the electoral process in which the Election Commission, whose members have been selected by the authorities, has sweeping powers to restrict political party activities in the lead-up to the elections; in protest against the authorities' enactment of these laws, the NLD, which had already expressed serious misgivings about the constitution-drafting process and outcome as well as the referendum, decided on 29 March 2010 to boycott the elections,

Considering that 12 parliamentarians continue to be imprisoned and that the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar stated in his report of 14 May 2009 that "In order to ensure national reconciliation and democratic transition, to which the Myanmar leadership has committed itself, all 2,156 prisoners of conscience currently detained by the authorities should be released before the 2010 elections",

1. Urges the authorities once more to release forthwith the 12 parliamentarians still imprisoned; recalls its long-standing belief that they were detained for merely exercising their freedom of expression and sentenced on the basis of legal proceedings which blatantly disregarded their right to fair trial;

2. Calls on the authorities to do everything possible to ensure that the elections are inclusive, free and fair and to make the changes to the electoral laws that this requires; draws their attention in this respect to the Declaration on Criteria for Free and Fair Elections which the Inter‑Parliamentary Union adopted on 26 March 1994;

3. Reiterates its long-standing wish to carry out an on-site visit; believes that such a visit would be very timely and expresses the hope that the authorities will give serious and urgent consideration to this proposal;

4. Calls on IPU Member Parliaments, in particular those of China and India as neighbouring countries, and the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), to lend their full support to the appeals made in this resolution, in particular since, with the elections drawing close, time is running short;

5. Decides to follow the electoral process closely, to revert to this matter during the 123rd IPU Assembly (October 2010), and to request the Committee to continue examining this case and report to it at its next session.

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* On 2 April 2008, MPU-Burma announced that Mr. Myint Thein died following his release, his health having greatly worsened in detention.

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