Word: junta
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...blogger. Twelve-and-a-half years for a labor leader. Six-and-a-half years for five Buddhist monks. Two years for a poet. In the space of just three days this week, more than 30 Burmese were sentenced to prison or hard labor by the country's ruling junta, a chilling legal onslaught that sent a clear message to other potential dissidents: speak out, and get used to life in a prison cell...
...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 concentrated crackdown on dissent clearly aimed at intimidating...
...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 reforms." Overall, one Burmese exile group based in Thailand estimates that 2,120 Burmese...
...Despite the predictable expressions of condemnation issued this week by countries like the U.S. and Britain, 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...
...said Soe Aung of the National Coalition of the Union of Burma, an alliance of exile groups. "If they were serious, they would release all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi." He said the move was intended to relieve international pressure - and more importantly domestic discontent - over the junta's handling of the cyclone relief effort in which outside assistance was at first refused, and then restricted. This week will also mark the first anniversary of protests led by Buddhist monks that were violently suppressed by the military...