Burma's Suu Kyi 'to be charged'

I know your intent is good, Helen, but with 20-30 years of hindsight available to everyone, that list of BCUK's accomplishments reads rather like a laundry list of the isolationist policies that have helped steer the country's economy to where it is today and produced the woeful lack of opportunity that exists for its citizenry -- policies that time has shown the regime to have clear immunity from, thanks to the economies of their unfettered-by-moral-causes neighbors, who buy not jobs-creating produced goods but raw natural resources, by the boatload.

Edited by: zeke7

Sorry I didn't mean to cause touble. I be super careful of what I post here in future.

you have not caused any trouble HelenIAM, you spoke from your heart and you care, sadly many who say their interest is in changing the political structure of Burma have their own political aspirations,and don't give tuppence for the actual effect on the ordinary people of Myanmar.
keep posting

Well Helen, haven't seen your name for awhile (except when I wrote it a couple of days ago inviting you for banana pancakes). Thanks for posting the petition and for the other things you do - you too, Hanuman. Lot's of opinionizing here (to paraphrase Harry Stack Sullivan, the supply of which greatly exceeds the demand), glad there are some doers (the demand for which greatly exceeds the supply).

I think I said earlier, really a sad thing.

Nobody knows, maybe without what has been done thus far things would be much worse. Maybe Obama will initiate engagement and maybe that will help. We'll see. In the meantime, some people are actually working to liberate all sentient beings! Talk about appearing to fail!

Maybe Obama will initiate engagement and maybe that will help

Not the way he is rowing back on all his campaign trail promises. Seems he is not the second coming after all.....

The Burma Campaign UK is one of the leading Burma campaign organisations in the world. Our lobbying has changed UK government and EU policy on Burma.

It'd be really good if they could actually influence the Burmese government's policies; somehow I think that would be much more effective. Thus, it's just another impotent "feel-good" organisation achieving nothing really for the people of Burma.

achieving nothing really for the people of Burma
--Is that all they're doing? Or is it worse than that? What have been the real ramifications to the people of Myanmar from the BCUK "persuading hundreds of companies to either withdraw from Burma or to adopt policies not to source certain goods from the country"?

That's an "achievement" ?

Burma Campaign, have made it very clear that NO ONE! no one at alll, should go to visit or deal with Myanmar, I personally think that Burma campaigns, ideology is to make life so miserable for the Burmese people that they will rise up against their Generals, they can then fulfil their own political aspirations within that country, democracy being a loose interpretation of their aims.
their former ceo Tony Jackson made great issue that no one should go then boasts hypocritically of his personal interview with ASSK, he did not have to swim to get to the house either.
________propaganda____________________
"you can fool all of the people some of the time
and some of the people all of the time
but you can't fool all the people all of the time"

"Maybe Obama will initiate engagement and maybe that will help."

buncha--well, according to this Reuter's report US policy towards the junta remains the same, having renewed sanctions.
But I don't think 'constructive engagement' has worked either. ASEAN members Singapore, Malaysia, and even Indonesia have been 'engaging' the military the past several years to reform without any success. Seems, the junta is impervious to any pressure without coordinated pressure from China, Thailand, and India.

http://www.reuters.com/article/vcCandidateFeed1/idUSTRE54E60D20090515

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Friday renewed U.S. sanctions against Myanmar's military government, saying its actions and policies continued to pose a serious threat to U.S. interests.

Obama informed Congress of his decision the same day the United States joined other Western critics in denouncing Myanmar's rulers for pressing what they called "trumped-up" new charges against detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in February the Obama administration was reviewing its policy toward Myanmar and looking at new ways to sway its entrenched military junta.

Washington has gradually tightened sanctions on the generals who have ruled the former Burma for more than four decades to try to force them into political rapprochement with Nobel laureate Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy.

The opposition won a 1990 election landslide only to be denied power, and Suu Kyi has been in prison or under house arrest for more than half of the last two decades.

The United States, Britain, the European Union, the United Nations and human rights groups condemned the trial that Suu Kyi faces from Monday on charges she broke the terms of her house arrest after an American intruder stayed in her home.

"The crisis between the United States and Burma ... has not been resolved," Obama said, citing sanctions first imposed by the United States in 1997 and ratcheted up several times in response to repression of democracy activists.

"These actions and policies are hostile to U.S. interests," Obama said. "For this reason, I have determined that it is necessary to ... maintain in force the sanctions against Burma to respond to this threat."

Maybe I was trying to take the focus off blaming this and that external factor (US policy, Burma Campaign) for what really is nothing more or less than a truly evil totalitarian regime.

I still maintain that it is unknowable what effects the efforts of the US, UK, New York Times, Burma Campaign, etc. have had. Without these and other efforts, my guess is that Burma would be a far greater nightmare.

I also think it would be of far greater value to the people of Burma and to this discussion if the posters who so passionately and in some cases unpleasantly criticize these efforts to influence the situation in Burma would offer their suggestions for what to do.