Members of the Free Burma Coalition-Philippines and Asia Pacific Solidarity Coalition (APSOC) today held a rally outside the Shangrila Plaza Hotel in Makati City and urged delegates of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) to include the issue of Burma on ARF’s agenda. The groups are also calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi whose term of house arrest expires on May 27, Sunday
Drink a coffee! Free Daw Aung San Suu Kyi!Members of the Free Burma
Coalition-Philippines and Asia Pacific Solidarity Coalition (APSOC) today held a rally outside the Shangrila Plaza Hotel in Makati City and urged delegates of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) to include the issue of Burma on ARF’s agenda. The groups are also calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi whose term of house arrest expires on May 27, Sunday.
Dubbed as “Drink a Coffee! Free Daw Aung San Suu Kyi”, protesters offered the ARF delegates coffee served in mugs printed with portrait of an imprisoned Aung San Suu Kyi. Protesters also dressed themselves with “aprons” with slogans “Help Free Aung San Suu Kyi.”
According to reports, Senior ministers of Asean have side-stepped the issue of Burma, including the continued detention of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, during a series of meetings in the Philippines this week. Philippines foreign undersecretary Erlinda Basilio said the human rights issue in Burma is not on the agenda of the Asean senior officials
meeting set to conclude on Wednesday and the Asean Regional Forum on Friday.
Aung San Suu Kyi, turning 62 on June 19, has spent 10 of the last 17 years of her political life under house arrest in Burma. This, amid increasingly vocal international demands for her immediate and unconditional release. She has been under detention since May 2003, with no contact to the outside world. Her party, the National League for Democracy won 1990 elections, but was never allowed to assume power.
What time and space are they talking about?
“Again, excluding Burma issue on the agenda of ARF shows that Asean is not doing enough to compel the junta to initiate significant reforms inside its country. The senior ministers are saying that Burma government needs time and space. What time and space are they talking about? Time and space for the junta to commit more crimes against its own people?“,* said Egoy Bans spokesperson of the FBC-Phils.
He added, “it has been a decade since the Asean adopted Burma, thinking that its membership in the regional grouping would mainstream the military regime but nothing significant happened since 1997. We agree that it takes time building a nation, but may we remind the Asean that it takes only a second of passivity for dictatorship to destroy a nation and its people?”
“We urge the Asean to put on the table the issue of Burma and the continued house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi. Aung San Suu Kyi must be freed on May 27 if the junta is really sincere to institute genuine political changes in Burma. Extending for another year her house arrest is not acceptable,” Bans concluded.
For more information: Pls contact Egoy Bans or Gani Abunda at +632*435-2900 or +632911-0205. Mobile +63919-660 5920; +639209132472
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