Word: burma
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...China shows few signs of wavering on a large scale, even in the face of renewed global media attention to its domestic human rights record and connection to abuses in Tibet, Burma, Zimbabwe, and Sudan...
...policy, voters in Hong Kong may directly elect half of their 60 legislators, but Beijing retains the power to appoint the territory's chief executive. Lee has doggedly lobbied for greater electoral freedom for Hong Kong citizens. "Martin is for Hong Kong what Aung San Suu Kyi is for Burma, and what the Dalai Lama is for Tibet," says Carl Gershman, President of the National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington D.C. pro-democracy organization that awarded Lee its Democracy Award in 1997. "He's the strong voice, the person who's been there such a long time and hasn...
...bookstores - and they must be purchased. Samizdat versions are available, and some pro-democracy activists have been poring through the text to publicize what they contend are the myriad ways in which the constitution subverts true democratic principles. But even if the draft were widely available, the majority of Burma's 53 million mostly impoverished residents are hardly likely to sit down with a 15-chapter tome...
...country's main opposition party, the National League for Democracy, has called for Burmese voters to reject the draft. But given that Burma's generals (who prefer to call their country Myanmar) rejected a plea by the United Nations to allow international monitoring of the referendum, no outside observer will be able to indicate whether voting irregularities take place. Furthermore, a February law has made criticizing the referendum a crime punishable by imprisonment - hardly an ideal environment for open debate on the charter draft. Amnesty International estimates 700 political prisoners still crowd the country's jails as a result...
...NOTE: The junta that runs the country imposed a systematic name change several years ago, decreeing that Burma was to be called Myanmar and the capital Rangoon was to be Yangon. The opposition has never accepted these changes; neither has the U.S. government. TIME continues to use Burma and Rangoon...