Word: burma
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...prospect is admittedly remote. But a renewed focus on military atrocities in Burma could increase pressure on the regime and re-energize Burma's embattled democracy movement in the wake of the gloomy Suu Kyi verdict. A compelling case for a Burmese war-crimes trial is made in a May 2009 report by the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School. Its authors, who include one former judge and two former prosecutors from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, detail systematic and widespread atrocities committed in Burma in recent years: killings, torture, rape, "epidemic levels" of forced...
...With Burma, however, inaction is probable. The international community has long groped for effective measures - be they carrots or sticks - to persuade the generals to behave better. Last month U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hinted that Suu Kyi's release could encourage Washington to lift its ban on new investment in Burma. That's obviously off the table for now. Post verdict, it has been replaced by growing calls for the U.N. Security Council to approve a global embargo on arms sales to the regime and investigate its atrocities allegedly committed in its long-running war against ethnic insurgents...
...about world opinion. But don't be fooled by common depictions of them as blinkered, paranoid and xenophobic. "These caricatures ignore the fact that the regime contains intelligent officers who are close observers of the international scene," observes Andrew Selth of Australia's Griffith University. There is evidence that Burma's rulers are concerned about retribution. Just look at the military-drafted constitution. "Approved" by a sham referendum in the wake of last year's Cyclone Nargis, it reserves for the military a quarter of seats in the new parliament after elections scheduled to be held next year. Tellingly...
...Read about the 2007 crackdown in Burma...
...Burma The Lady Remains a Captive It could have been worse. Burmese opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi will spend 18 more months under house arrest as a prisoner of the country's military junta for violating the terms of an earlier sentence after an American man swam uninvited to her lakeside home in May. The good news: the latest sentence, by military decree, is shorter than the maximum of five years in prison. Suu Kyi will be confined long enough to ensure that she is not a player in Burma's 2010 elections, which are expected...