Editorials: US Has Opportunity to Help Burma November 16, 2005

In an editorial on November 13, the Boston Globe called for President Bush, during his visit to Asia, to push allies to take up the issue of Burma in the UN Security Council.  The editors assert that since both Japan and the Philippines are current members of the Security Council, Bush ought to pressure them to support Burma’s struggle for democracy. 

The Globe declared that while China may support Burma because it supplies the military junta, “Japan has no excuse, and neither does the Philippines.”  As democracies, the editorial argues, Japan and the Philippines ought to be “shamed into acting in solidarity with the people of Burma.”  The editorial reminds readers that in 1990 the military junta overturned a parliamentary election in which Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won 82 percent of the seats.

Haseenah Koyakutty, in an Op/Ed of the November 15 in USA Today argues that the United States should act now.  Koyakutty writes:

The United States can still make a difference. While it dawdles, however, Burma has found better friends in India and China, which have ignored those sanctions [initiated by the US in 1990]. And that does not bode well for U.S. leverage on the military regime or for Suu Kyi.

Koyakutty suggests that in addition to working to raise Burma with the UN Security Council, the United States should use its influence to push ASEAN to take up Burma in their annual meeting next month.  If ASEAN were to pursue the issue, India and China would pay attention, he speculates.