Tutu calls for sanctions

[NBH03114@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

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FROM:NBH03114@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Burmese Relief Center--Japan
DATE:April 1, 1995
TIME: 3:02PMJST
SUBJ:Desmond Tutu urges sanctions


TUTU URGES SANCTIONS AGAINST
BURMA

By Rev. Desmond Tutu
Special to The Daily Yomiuri

Thursday, March 30, 1995

     (Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung
San Suu Kyi, the founder and leader of the
National League for Democracy which won
a landslide victory in the Burmese elections
of May 1990, is in the sixth year of house
arrest imposed by the ruling junta.  Here, the
Rev. Desmond Tutu, archbishop of Cape
Town and a fellow Nobel laureate, makes a
plea for punitive sanctions against the Burma
regime.)

I have been struck by the fact that the three
women who in recent years have received the
Nobel Peace Prize share yet another attribute
apart from the distinction of the Prize itself. 
These three, Mother Theresa, Rigoberto
Menchu and Aung San Suu Kyi, apart from
their gender, are also physically somewhat
petite, and yet of course they have a
formidable moral stature.

Isn't it decidedly odd that someone so very
slender in body as Suu Kyi should fill an
entire military dictatorship and its cohorts,
one that is armed to the teeth, with such
trepidation that they must keep her under
house arrest these many years?  For what
reason are they scared of someone so
physically fragile and vulnerable?  Were it
not so tragic for Burma it might strike one as
no more than bizarre and ridiculous that a
group sporting so grandiloquent a title as the
State Law and Order Restoration Council
(the ruling junta's name) should transgress
every known canon of the rule of law in their
arbitrary treatment of my sister Nobel
Laureate.  One is tempted to ask what "law
and order" and what "restoration"?The same
Alice in Wonderland treatment of language
was our own experience in South Africa
under successive apartheid regimes when
words were wrenched of their normal every
day meaning and twisted to what the users
wanted them to mean.  And so in South
Africa they had an Extension of University
Education Act which actually did the precise
opposite by strictly limiting the admission of
black South Africans to white universities. 

The apartheid rulers also tried to foist on our
people those they wanted to be leaders of the
oppressed.  They were looking for
unscrupulous pliant collaborators who would
assist the apartheid government implement
their vicious and evil policies.  Mercifully, the
people always knew who their leaders were,
despite all the efforts of the authorities to
vilify and discredit them.  Despite harassment
and banning orders, the people always knew
that their real leaders were either in jail,
under house arrest, or somewhere in exile.

The SLORC tried to hoodwink the world
with their May 1990 election in Burma,
hoping that the opposition would be too
fragmented to pose any real threat.  They
were certain that they or their surrogates
would emerge victorious.  Mercifully, the
people are not nearly as stupid as some
politicians and generals would think.  The
people knew who their leaders were and they
gave Suu Kyi and her National League for
Democracy a landslide victory.  The SLORC
was completely confounded and showed
their true colors when they did not step
down, free Suu Kyi and let her take over the
rains of government as was her democratic
right.  She was thereby prevented from
assuming the mantle of her illustrious father,
the indomitable Aung San, the people's hero
and leader of their liberation struggle.

We used to say to our people in the dark days
of apartheid's repression: "This is a moral
universe.  Right and wrong matter.  There is
no way that injustice and oppression will
prevail forever over their counterparts.  The
perpetrators of evil have already lost."  Our
faith was fully vindicated when Nelson
Mandela became the first democratically
elected president of a new, free and
democratic South Africa.  And white South
Africans discovered the truth of what we had
tried to tell them -- that they would never be
truly free until we were free.

Right will prevail in Burma, too.  Suu Kyi
will be free and all her people will be free. 
The military junta will then be free as well. 

Nelson Mandela suffered grievously at the
hands of the apartheid regime, but he
emerged a moral giant, remarkably and
magnanimously working for reconciliation
and forgiveness with his former oppressors. 
For this he was honored with the Nobel
Peace Prize.  Aung San Suu Kyi is suffering
now and her moral stature has grown.  The
1991 Nobel Peace Prize is eloquent
testimony of this.

Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan tried
to be nice to our apartheid rulers and
attempted gentle persuasion in the form of
his "constructive engagement" policy.  We
condemned it as quite disastrous for our
people and called for the imposition of
punitive sanctions, especially financial
sanctions.  We were proved right. 
Constructive engagement was a dismal failure
and sanctions brought us what we had all
worked and suffered and prayed for, the end
of apartheid and a negotiated settlement.

The constructive engagement policies of the
ASEAN countries toward Burma are
doomed to fail.  Only the application of
punitive actions will bring about an end to
military rule and usher in the democratic
government the Burma have already voted
for.  Suu Kyi will then guide her country as
its democratically elected leader.  Two years
ago I was in a group of Nobel Peace
Laureates who were refused entry into
Burma, but we made a call from Thailand for
such sanctions and the release of Suu Kyi
and other political leaders.  The international
community acted decisively in the case of
apartheid in South Africa with spectacular
results.  It cannot do less in the case of
Burma.

What is the world still waiting for?