Burmese Want a “Democratic Society” According to Opposition Group
October 27, 2006

U Pu Chin Sian Thang and U Thein Pe, two members of the democratically elected parliament of Burma that has never been permitted to meet, claim in a Washington Post op-ed piece that “Burma is a nation in which the people have clearly and repeatedly articulated what they want: a democratic society.”  The National League for Democracy coalition “won 82 percent of the seats in parliament” in the elections in which the results were not implemented. 

In September the United Nations began to formally discuss the situation in Burma, a progression that the authors have deemed a “welcome development.”  They go on to describe the actions of the military-dictatorship in Burma as a “brutal campaign of terror,” and see the Security Council recognition of the problem as “incredibility important.”  The Burmese government has “the world’s only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient,” carries out attacks against ethnic minorities, engages in widespread rape, and conscripts a force of 70,000 “child soldiers,” according to the editorial.

An additional Washington Post report provides evidence to the editorial authors claim that “there is overwhelming evidence that the people of Burma want an end to the dictatorship that has been forced upon them.”  The “1988 Generation Students” group recently launched a petition campaigning for the release of political prisoners in Burmese, collecting over a half million signatures.  The group consists of members from a “1988 pro-democracy uprising that was brutally crushed by the military.”  The Bangkok Post reports that the petition campaign “remarkably” had “not yet led to massive arrests” by the Burmese military.

Sources:

Bangkok Post: Burmese dissident group uses new tactic
Washington Post: In Burma, a Cry for U.N. Help
Washington Post: World in Brief (10/26/2006)