Word: burma
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...signed on July 21 with much flourish and a promise to "strengthen democracy, enhance good governance and the rule of law, and to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms." An admirable undertaking, except that the person formally ratifying the charter was Nyan Win, the Foreign Minister of Burma, a country with one of the world's most appalling human-rights records. Indeed, Burma's signing of the document during this year's ASEAN ministerial meeting in Singapore threatens to render meaningless the lofty humanitarian goals set by the organization's 10 member nations...
...Burma's economy limps along with help from its regional neighbors, including ASEAN members such as Thailand and Singapore as well as non-members India and China. Critics of ASEAN say the forum has not done enough to pressure Burma to end human-rights abuses. Although Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines indicated earlier that they might delay their own ratifications of the charter until Burma cleans up its human-rights record, they have been less publicly forceful in their demands since then. While the U.S. and the European Union have tightened sanctions against Burma's ruling military junta since...
...approach has failed. Since Burma's junta took over the country, also known as Myanmar, in 1962, its people have gone from some of the richest in Asia to among its poorest. An election won by the opposition was duly ignored. Political prisoners crowd jails. The most recent example of the generals' callousness came in May when Cyclone Nargis devastated the country's Irrawaddy Delta, leaving 138,000 people dead or missing and causing $4 billion in damage, according to an international assessment released on July 21. Yet instead of promptly accepting offers of help from around the world...
...ASEAN's nine other members not to at least arch an eyebrow when Burma signed the charter is nothing short of willful ignorance. Yes, ASEAN did speak forcefully on July 20 when Singaporean Foreign Minister George Yeo said the bloc's members felt "deep disappointment" that Burma in May prolonged the detention of opposition figurehead and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. But any mention of that negative emotion was excised from the formal communiqué issued by ASEAN the following day. And an initial flurry of excitement caused by Yeo when he said that his Burmese counterpart had told...
...several things happened since that have forced a retreat from those heady days: the U.S. war on terror gave intervention a bad name by associating it with big-power unilateralism; the crises got bigger - genocide in Darfur, famine in North Korea, a cyclone in Burma. Global competition also worked against global unity: China, for instance, blocked U.N. Security Council action against Sudan over Darfur to protect is oil concessions. Zimbabwe may have repugnant rulers, but it also has a consistent and grateful ally in South African President Thabo Mbeki and his fight against Western hegemony. Additionally, Harare has the world...