MYANMAR: THE URGENT NEED TO PAVE THE WAY FOR A TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACY

Myanmar, or Burma as it was called until 1989, has been under military rule since 1962 when General Ne Win took power in a coup d'état. It is regularly making headlines in the media, and more often than not owing to its most prominent citizen, 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent much of her life in Myanmar under house arrest. Her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won the elections by a large majority which the military regime had organized in 1990. Governmental and non-governmental sources alike recognized that they had been free and fair; however, the military regime has never allowed the parliament thus elected to convene.

The military regime set up in January 1993 a National Convention to draft a new constitution for which it fixed a rigid framework of six pre-determined objectives and 104 principles, consecrating the leading role of the army. In 1995 NLD delegates walked out of the Convention as it did not in any way allow for free and democratic debate. By 1996, when the Convention was adjourned, less than 3% of the delegates were actually elected representatives and none of them was from the NLD. In May 2004, the Convention was reconvened, but none of the obstacles to a free and democratic debate have been removed.

It is not surprising that ever since 1990 this situation has been of deep concern to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. As the world organization of parliaments striving to strengthen democracy worldwide, the IPU has condemned the failure of the authorities to convene parliament and it has expressed its view that the National Convention, in its current form, is nothing but an attempt to prolong military dictatorship.

But it is not only the institutional level that has been of deep concern to the IPU. Indeed, in the wake of the 1990 elections, scores of parliamentarians-elect were arrested and detained and many were arbitrarily sentenced under draconian laws. Many more have been forced to resign as parliamentarians-elect and from the NLD. Today, 13 parliamentarians-elect remain in prison, some of whom are said to be in a poor state of health. This is the case of Than Nyein and May Win Myint. Both were arrested in October 1997 and two months later sentenced to seven years' hard labour for holding anti-government rallies.

In November 2004, they were given an additional 60-day prison term and in February 2006, their prison term was extended for a further year under the State Protection Law. Both are reportedly not receiving the medical treatment they require. There are, moreover, regular reports of illtreatment of detainees and parliamentarians-elect have been sentenced for passing information about such illtreatment to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar. Thus, Saw Naing Naing and Zaw Myint Maung, both arrested in October 1990 and sentenced respectively to 25 and 10 years' imprisonment for holding a secret meeting to form a provisional government, were given an additional sevenyear sentence in 1996 for attempting to pass information about prison conditions to the United Nations Special Rapporteur.

Parliamentarianselect, like anyone else engaging in an attempt to carry out a political activity, risk arrest or rearrest and detention at any time. Thus, in March 2003, following an attack on Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters - widely believed to have been orchestrated by the military junta - she and scores of NLD supporters and parliamentarians-elect were arrested or re-arrested. Aung San Suu Kyi and 17 NLD senior officials were later placed under "protective custody", and Aung San Suu Kiy has since remained under house arrest. The glimmer of hope that appeared when talks between the military regime and the NLD started in October 2000 evaporated after those events, and the people of Myanmar are no closer to a democratic future.

The IPU and its Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians have not only consistently urged the authorities to release all parliamentarians-elect who remain in prison, but have also called on the authorities to engage in genuine talks with the NLD to prepare the way for the transition to a democratic government to which the people of Myanmar aspire.

The IPU has been calling on its Member Parliaments to take strong action in support of democracy in Myanmar and has compiled information on parliamentary initiatives that have been taken to this end. The IPU has, in particular, encouraged the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus to continue to strengthen its important work, which resulted in Myanmar abstaining from assuming the chairmanship of ASEAN in 2006. Clearly, for the IPU, parliaments all over the world should make every effort and press their governments to ensure that the country embarks on a process which will finally enable the people of Myanmar to exercise their inalienable right to participate in their government, as enshrined in Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.