Suu
Kyi backs end of US
sanctions By Carey L Biron
WASHINGTON - Myanmar's opposition leader
Aung San Suu Kyi used her first public address in
the United States to support the lifting of the
last remaining US economic sanctions on her
country, but also warned that all remaining
political prisoners need to be released.
"If you talk about genuine
democratization, there should be not a single
political prisoner," she said in Washington on
Tuesday.
Her visit comes just a day after
the quasi-civilian government in Myanmar (also
known as Burma) released another 500 prisoners,
among whom Suu Kyi said that nearly 90 were
political prisoners. According to her party, the
National League for Democracy (NLD), more than 200
political prisoners remain in Myanmar. Some
groups, including the US
government, say the figure could be twice that
number.
Before the Myanmar government,
long synonymous with the military, started a
series of contested reforms two years ago, the
number of political prisoners in the country was
estimated at higher than 2,100.
The issue
gets at the heart of the talks that will take
place in the coming days between Suu Kyi and
members of the US government, which has been one
of the most powerful voices for engagement as the
Myanmar government has engaged in a contested
reforms process over the past two years.
In the eyes of many activists, sanctions
offer the last significant tool with which the
United States can continue to goad the Myanmar
government towards opening up. But US government
officials have said that the sanctions can be put
back on anytime, should backsliding begin.
While Suu Kyi has publicly wavered on the
issue in recent months, on Tuesday she set out her
views on sanctions clearly.
"I don't think
we need to cling on to sanctions unnecessarily,
because I want the Burmese people to be
responsible for their own destiny, and not to
depend too much on external help," she said,
following meetings with US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton.
"We will need external
help ... but in the end we have to build our own
democracy. And we would like US-Burma relations to
be founded firmly on the recognition of the need
for our own people to be accountable for their own
destiny."
Finding balance Suu
Kyi, now an elected member of Myanmar's new
parliament while continuing to lead the NLD, the
country's main opposition party, is at the
beginning of a 17-day visit to the United States.
The trip is her first to the US since a stint
working with the United Nations in New York during
the 1970s, and her third international excursion
since being released in lat 2010 from nearly two
decades under house arrest.
Having gained
some official assurance that she would indeed be
let back into Myanmar, Suu Kyi has already visited
Thailand and Europe. The pomp with which she was
welcomed during those first two trips reportedly
strained relations with the government,
particularly with President Thein Sein, the
quasi-reformist with whom Suu Kyi's relationship
is seen as particularly important.
This
time around, although she is again being met at
the highest levels of government - on Wednesday
she will receive a Congressional Gold Medal, while
a visit with President Barack Obama may also take
place - Suu Kyi is travelling with a top aide of
President Thein Sein.
In her introductory
remarks, Clinton noted the need to find that
balance, and discussed "the challenge of moving
from protest to politics, from symbol to
stateswoman". She said that she, too, has had such
an experience.
"It exposes you to a whole
new sort of criticism and even attack, and
requires the kind of pragmatic compromise and
coalition building that is the lifeblood of
politics but may disappoint the purists who have
held faith with you while you were on the
outside."
Suu Kyi suggested that her
entire country is attempting to figure out this
same balance, from the top of government on down.
"I am now a member of the new legislature
… we are beginning to learn to work together,
beginning to learn the art of compromise, give and
take, the achievement of consensus," she said.
"This is beginning in the legislature, and we hope
that it will spread out to the rest of the
political culture of Burma. Because Burma's
political culture has been very weak in negotiated
compromise - it is not the way we have worked for
a good many years."
Part of that
compromise seems to be Suu Kyi's willingness to
countenance a final rollback of the economic
sanctions that Washington imposed two decades ago.
Since it took over in early 2011, the new
government in Myanmar has pushed strenuously to
have the sanctions removed.
While the
United States has scaled back certain parts of the
measures twice already this year, and while
several other countries - most notably those that
make up the European Union - have already done
away with similar punitive measures completely,
Washington continues to maintain an import ban
that the Myanmar government is keen to get around.
In the lead-up to Suu Kyi's US visit,
several analysts suggested that the Myanmar
government was pushing her to request the US to do
away with the import ban. While Clinton made no
reference to the issue on Tuesday, a Suu Kyi
endorsement could push Washington to make an
announcement on the issue during a visit next week
by President Thein Sein, to attend the UN General
Assembly.
Clear timeline Still,
both Clinton and Suu Kyi were quick to emphasize
the difficulties that remain ahead, both in
consolidating Myanmar's nascent reforms process
and in forging a new bilateral relationship with
the United States. On this latter issue, Suu Kyi
made a few pointed remarks in offering a framework
for cooperation.
"While the United States
seems to be concentrating a lot on the economic
aspect of its relations with my country, I hope
they will do this in full awareness of the need to
promote rule of law," she said.
She called
on the US to help President Thein Sein carry out
current and future reforms, but also repeatedly
stressed the need to strengthen the other two
branches of government - the legislature and,
especially, the judiciary.
"If you looked
at our judiciary, you'd probably see nothing
because this is our weakest arm," she said. "New
US-Burma bilateral relations need to be founded
firmly in the need to give equal weight to the
executive, the legislature and the judiciary, and
to judge the progress of democratization in Burma
by looking at each of these institutions and how
well they're able to work together to establish
democratic practices."
While the reforms
of the past year and a half move ahead, she also
warned that the process could not simply continue
indefinitely at the sole whim of the military and
the government's top leadership.
"We need
a timeframe when we're talking of political
settlement," she said. "We cannot keep going on
benchmarks - we have to know when we want to get
to where at what time."
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