Word: burma
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...Even for a notoriously repressive regime, the jail sentences were unusually harsh. Last year, the generals who control Burma, also known as Myanmar, violently crushed a peaceful, monk-led protest movement calling for economic and political reforms. Hopes that an influx of foreign aid - dispersed after Cyclone Nargis devastated the Irrawaddy Delta last spring - would convince the junta to take a softer approach were dashed by the rash of detentions that accelerated in late October. Last week, two journalists were jailed, while three lawyers representing political activists have also been sentenced to prison. "These last few weeks show a more...
...Burma has scheduled multi-party elections in 2010. The polls are considered a charade by many international observers, who note that the leader of the main opposition party, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, is under house arrest and is barred from participating. But even after locking up a woman whose National League for Democracy won the 1990 elections that the junta then ignored, Burma's ruling brass still appears spooked by the power of the people. "Burma's leaders are clearing the decks of political activists," says Pearson, "before they announce the next round of sham political...
...there's little that the West appears able to do to convince the junta, which has ruled since 1962, to treat its citizens more humanely. Economic sanctions by the U.S. and the European Union are undercut by the eagerness with which China and other Asian countries do business with Burma's generals. Although one of Asia's poorest nations, Burma holds a wealth of natural resources like timber, natural gas and precious stones...
...pictures of Cyclone Nargis' devastation in Burma here...
...Long Kesh is one of defiance and resistance," says Danny Morrison, a former spokesman for Bobby Sands and an ICCT supporter. "A lot of positive things came out of here. We should use the site to explain how [Northern Ireland's] resolution came about. I can see students from Burma and the Middle East coming to use the space...