Sir, - Ten years ago, on August 8th, 1998, thousands of peacefully demonstrating pro-democracy Burmese students - monks, children, doctors and citizens of all kinds - took to the streets to protest against military rule. They were brutally gunned down by the army. The killings went on for a week and estimates put the number of deaths at around 10,000. The government responded by setting up a military junta under the sinister name of State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). Thousands of students fled the country, many more were brutally killed.
Then, in 1989, SLORC announced it was holding national elections. The National League for Democracy, headed by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, attracted widespread support. SLORC responded by putting Daw Suu under house arrest. Despite this, the NLD won over 80 per cent of the vote when elections were finally held in 1990. The military junta responded by arresting newly elected MPs and driving others out of the country. Eight years later, they have still not allowed Burma's elected Parliament to convene.
Daw Suu was offered the right to leave Burma, never to return. She chose to remain in Rangoon under house arrest. In 1991 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her non-violent resistance to the now illegal government of Burma. Her house arrest officially ended on July 15th, 1995, after six years. Eight years on, Burma's elected Parliament has yet to convene. Aung San Suu Kyi is not a dissident, nor a leader of the opposition, as the world press wrongly describes her. She is the rightful, legally elected leader of the country.
Burma under the generals is one of the most frightful totalitarian regimes imaginable. According to the annual Human Rights Index, Burma is one of the three worst human rights abusers in the world. Once a very wealthy nation, Burma is today one of the poorest. Nevertheless, it spends well over 60 per cent of its annual budget on weapons purchases. Burma has no conflict with its neighbours; its guns are used exclusively against its own 46 million people.
The Burmese dictatorship is supported in part by a very productive trade: heroin. Some 60 per cent of the heroin on the streets of the Western world is Burmese cultivated, its supply lines controlled directly by the same military that systematically rapes and guns down women and children forced into slave labour.
Yet only the United States has heeded Aung San Suu Kyi's pleas for no further investments in Burma. The European Union has been silent, and ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) advocates engagement with Burma.
Aung San Suu Kyi has set a deadline for parliament to be convened: August 21st, 1998. What will happen then is anyone's guess. If the events which occurred in a car in the sweltering 125-degree heat on a road outside of Rangoon a few days ago are any indication, when Daw Suu was physically pinned down in the back seat of her car and driven back to her home in Rangoon by a soldier in order to stop her attending a party rally, then it is imperative that the West listen to her demands and help clear the way for her country's path to democracy. - Yours, etc., John Boorman,
Annamoe,
Co Wicklow.