Burma: USA on Human Rights

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/* Written  5:58 am  Mar  2, 1994 by DEBRA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx in igc:hrnet.asia-pac */
/* ---------- "Burma: USA on Human Rights" ---------- */
[This article has been excerpted.]

Guardian Weekly
February 27, 1994

CLINTON STEPS UP PRESSURE ON BURMA OVER RIGHTS
Thomas W. Lippman

Seven months after President Clinton ordered an interagency
review of U.S. policy toward the pariah government in Burma,
his...advisors are still looking for ways to increase
pressure on the Rangoon regime to improve its human
rights...

The challenge they face, according to...officials, is to
muster more international efforts to isolate the Burmese
junta over human rights...without undermining parallel
efforts to persuade the junta to crack down on heroin
trafficking in what the junta calls Myanmar.

Clinton openly has supported Burma's most prominent
political dissident, Aung San Suu Kyi, but several members
of Congress have been agitating for a more decisive
confrontation with the Rangoon government.

The policy review has been prolonged, an...official said,
because several agencies involved have differed over
tactics. But the official said those in Congress and in
human rights groups who think the administration is wavering
are wrong.

"...The issue is, are there ways we can be better engaged in
the effort to support human rights and democracy?"

The junta's decision to allow a U.S. congressional visit to
Aung San Suu Kyi this week was apparently intended to
influence the administration policy review and a forthcoming
United Nations human rights report, according to...officials
and other analysts.

[...]

Given Burma's record of human rights violations, narcotics
trafficking, political repression and the largest outflow of
refugees in Asia, "we have a classic debate," a senior
official said. "Do you engage and hope to influence? Right
now, we lean more toward isolation" of the regime.

Human rights groups, Clinton and administration officials
and Yozo Yokota, the U.N. 'special rapporteur' on human
rights in Burma, all agree that the junta known as
SLORC...has one of the most dismal human rights records of
any government.

[...]

 ...Clinton has maintained a very low level of diplomatic
representation in Rangoon.

Some members of Congress, led by Sen. Daniel P.
Moynihan...want to go further. Moynihan and...other senators
from both parties told Clinton in October that "nothing less
than a change in government" would lead to an end to human
rights abuses...

Yokota is scheduled to deliver his latest report this week
at a U.N. Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva.
According to Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington representative
of...Human Rights Watch, SLORC refused to allow Yokota to
meet Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace laureate, who
has been under house arrest in Rangoon for nearly five
years.

[...]