Western states hint at support for easing Burma sanctions - Telegraph.co.uk

After spending 15 of the last 20 years in confinement Mrs Suu Kyi, the Nobel peace laureate and democracy advocate, acknowledged that her release marked a potential moment of great change in the stand-off between Burma/Myanmar and the West. The freeze in relations has seen the former British colony grow increasing reliant on China.

Kevin Rudd, the Australian foreign minister and former prime minister, has told Mrs Suu Kyi that "reliable" friends were ready to be flexible on sanctions if she could make headway on domestic reform with the generals that run the country.

Mrs Suu Kyi used her second full day of freedom to indicate that her position on Burma's international isolation had undergone changes from the view that the military regime could only be overthrown by sanctions and isolation. "I don't want to see the military falling. I want to see the military rising to dignified heights of professionalism and true patriotism," she told the BBC. "I think it's quite obvious what the people want: the people just want better lives based on security and on freedom."

International sanctions mostly target regime figures – banning travel, financial transactions and business dealing – and many Western countries have imposed an arms embargo on the regime.

As recently as last Thursday, the EU added judges responsible for sentencing Mrs Suu Kyi to the visa ban list and President Barack Obama of the US renewed sanctions in May.

However Senator Jim Webb, a prominent supporter of President Obama, has warned that sanctions and Western business boycotts had rendered Burma as little more than a "province" of China. And the sanctions were already deeply unpopular within Asia, including among intellectual opinion. Jose Ramos Horta, the president of East Timor and a fellow winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, hit out at the isolation of Burma as not "morally good". "I'm very happy with the release of Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest after more than 15 years without reason," he said. "I see it as something good and I congratulate the military regime in Myanmar for handling this," he said.

"I'm also waiting and hoping for two blocs, namely America and Europe, which have been applying harsh sanctions against Myanmar, to lift them."

Derek Tonkin, a former British ambassador in Bangkok, said: "Suu Kyi's reappearance is something that will be utilised at a time when the US and EU are looking for some kind of engagement. There are areas where she can play a considerable role. Suu Kyi could hold consultations with diplomats, even if the regime isn't prepared to talk to them at this stage. There are things she can do with the West that they can't do with the regime."

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Opposition cries foul over Burma (Myanmar) election - Christian Science Monitor

Bangkok, Thailand

A landslide victory for a pro-regime party in Burma’s election has stirred anger among opponents, who claim there was widespread cheating in Sunday’s controversial ballot. Unofficial results suggest that the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) could take about 80 percent of seats in the new parliament. This reverses earlier forecasts of a sizeable opposition bloc that could check the executive’s power.

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While the victory was widely expected, as the government-supported USDP was contesting every seat, political observers say the scale points to systematic rigging of the results. They say that in some seats, apparent opposition wins were overturned by the 11th-hour arrival of uncounted advance ballots that tipped the balance toward the USDP.

Western governments have roundly condemned the election as a farce. But China, a key military ally, welcomed the vote. A government spokesman said Tuesday that the ballot had been “smooth and steady.” Vietnam issued a statement on behalf of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, to which Burma belongs, calling the election a “significant step forward."

No official results have been released. In its Tuesday news program, Burmese state television made no reference to the polls, Reuters reported.

Opposition leaders have already filed complaints with authorities and are expected to demand recounts or reruns in disputed seats. Some losing candidates have refused to sign the official tallies, which is required under the election law, say observers. The conservative National Unity Party, which ran second to the USDP and whose candidates are mostly aligned with the previous military regime, has also said it would contest the results.

“We clearly saw how the ballots were manipulated. We have evidence,” Yuza Maw Htoon, an independent candidate in Rangoon who lost to the USDP, told the Monitor in a telephone interview. She says pro-democracy groups were still discussing how to press for redress and criticized the election commission as biased.

"I admit defeat but it was not fair play. It was full of malpractice and fraud and we will try to expose them and tell the people," Democratic Party leader Thu Wai told Reuters. Khin Maung Swe, leader the larger pro-democracy party National Democratic Force, also told Reuters: "We took the lead at the beginning but the USDP later came up with so-called advance votes and that changed the results completely, so we lost."

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So far, none of the parties have called for street protests, which are illegal in Burma and have been brutally suppressed in the past. Still, more than 10,000 ethnic minorities have fled Burma amid violence that came one day after the rare elections.

A Burmese scholar living overseas, who declined to be named, said the election was never intended as a true test of public opinion. Instead, it was engineered to create a new system in which the opposition would have a small voice. “The question was always how small a voice was going to be allowed. It now looks like it will be smaller than even some cynics had hoped,” he says.

In a report issued Monday, an independent monitoring group described the use of advance votes as “a serious concern” and pointed to collusion between election officials and USDP members in collecting the ballots. The group also highlighted other voting irregularities, such as the intimidation of voters who feared reprisals if they voted against the government.

The opposition may also have suffered from a boycott campaign by the former party of imprisoned democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, which refused to participate. Ms. Suu Kyi’s current term of house arrest ends Nov 13. There has been no official announcement on her release, but her lawyer has said that he expected her to be freed.

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