Word: shwe
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...Standing Alone Many in Burma's pro-democracy movement - and in the U.S. Congress - view any overtures to the generals as appeasement and say Than Shwe personally has blood on his hands. Aung Lynn Htut, a former Burmese diplomat and army major who defected to the U.S. in 2005, claims Grandfather personally ordered the massacre of 81 men, women and children on a remote Burmese island in 1998. Five years later, Than Shwe's thugs attacked the convoy of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi at Depayin, west of Mandalay, killing or injuring dozens of her supporters...
...woman." In August Suu Kyi was found guilty of violating the terms of her house arrest after an American man swam uninvited to her lakeside home. Her initial three-year prison sentence was commuted to 18 months of house arrest because, said the order read aloud in court, Than Shwe "desires ... to exercise leniency upon her." (Read "Burma Court Finds Aung San Suu Kyi Guilty...
...Military defector Aung Lynn Htut is unconvinced. He warns that his former commander will do anything to discredit Suu Kyi, a longtime supporter of Western sanctions. Than Shwe met Webb as part of a campaign to portray the Nobel laureate as "the enemy of the Burmese people [who] is too stubborn to lift sanctions," he says. But even Suu Kyi's pro-sanctions stance is no longer a given. U.S. engagement was "a good thing," she admitted recently through a spokesman for her National League for Democracy party...
...sounded cautious, and who can blame her? Than Shwe "remains impervious to the appeal of reform or compromise with the opposition because he wishes at all costs to maintain a personal monopoly on power," says Seekins. So will a fresh diplomatic onslaught work? The new U.S. approach on Burma is the product of a White House that stresses diplomacy over confrontation. "It's more a change in tactics than overall strategy," says Fink. Also driving the policy review are Washington's concerns over China's influence over Burma and Than Shwe's apparent nuclear ambitions. Seekins believes Washington risks overestimating...
...That won't happen anytime soon. It would send "the wrong signal," warned Campbell. His boss agrees. "Sanctions remain important as part of our policy," said Hillary Clinton, describing them and engagement as "tools" to achieve the same goal: democracy in Burma. Considering Than Shwe's nonexistent track record on reform, U.S. officials are right to downplay the impact of engagement. Barring any real concessions from the hard man himself - starting with the release of Suu Kyi and other political prisoners prevented from running in next year's polls - democracy remains a distant prospect. "Everyone is calling for reform...