The junta helped ensure its victory by preventing opponents from campaigning against it.

The junta in Rangoon had become one of the world's greatest human rights violators.

While the military junta has since kept control over the executive branch of government, its head, Salou Djibo, appointed a civilian, Mahamadou Danda, as prime minister. In addition to vowing elections, which have not yet been scheduled, Djibo has pledged that members of the junta will not run for office.

General Prayuth, who has led the junta since a 2014 coup ousted a civilian government, said this week's bombings hurt the hearts of Thai people.

The Security Council, by paragraph 5 of the resolution, also imposed travel restrictions on members of the military junta and adult members of their families.

The head of the Thai junta urged his countrymen on Friday to have patience while investigators determine who was behind a wave of deadly bombings in Thailand this week.

Gen. Prayuth Chan ocha, the junta chief and prime minister, hinted that the perpetrators were bad people opposed to a new Constitution that was approved by voters on Sunday in a nationwide referendum.

To outsiders, the region is virtually synonymous with political polarization. Fatigue clad guerrillas, charismatic populists, and reactionary military junta leaders have long cut much larger figures than moderate politicians in boring gray suits.

Those who doubt that this could happen again should consider the European country hardest hit in the current crisis Greece. After the colonels junta there fell in 1974, a democratic system sprang up.

Since the 1990 s crackdown, human rights violations have continued, most recently with the suppression of the protests led by Buddhist monks in 2007. The average citizen has grown poorer, even as those close to the junta become ostentatiously rich.

Yet a peaceful democratic transition may actually happen. Following an assassination attempt by an aide de camp, Dadis Camara fled the country, and the interim junta leader, General Sékouba Konaté, allowed the opposition political parties to appoint a civilian prime minister.

Moving onto ASEAN, much attention will be on how Obama interacts with Myanmar s leader, who will also be present. Obama should stand for democracy and help push for a clean vote in the elections that the junta has promised for 2010.

Nevertheless, four years on, a UN investigation has yet to take place, because the military junta refuses to grant the UN access to the country. Incidents of rape continue to be reported, and the Burmese military surely must know what is happening.

The news blackout imposed by Burma s military junta on its decision to forego its turn as chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) next year shows that it has received a severe blow to its prestige. Indeed, the decision was far from voluntary.

Moreover, unlike Mandela during his 27 year imprisonment, Suu Kyi has had her hopes raised and dashed before. In the mid 1990 s, and again in 2002 2003, reconciliation between Suu Kyi s National League for Democracy (NLD) and the military junta seemed to be in the offing.

In 1990, when the NLD won 81 of the seats in Parliament, the junta promptly voided the results and arrested Suu Kyi. In 2012, the NLD won 43 of the 44 seats that it contested, and the military accepted Suu Kyi as the reform movement s legitimate leader.

As an inducement to peaceful change, China can also guarantee the personal safety and wealth of the military junta should its members have to leave Burma suddenly. But China should make it clear that such protection requires the Burmese generals to cooperate in finding a peaceful solution.

As recently as 2010, the regime held elections so blatantly rigged that the main opposition party refused to participate. But in 2011, shortly before assuming the presidency, Sein, a general who served as Prime Minister under the junta, began to take steps that impressed even the most skeptical observers.

The junta leaders have done little to facilitate recovery efforts in the wake of the disaster. Indeed, they have announced their intentions to move forward with conducting a national referendum scheduled for Saturday to approve a new constitution, which they hope will entrench their power for decades to come.

Any change of regime in Burma will not be the result of international intervention, but of political negotiations between the junta and its domestic opponents. China should thus recognize that using its influence would not imply accepting as a matter of principle intervention in other countries domestic affairs.

As for Myanmar, its neighbors and fellow ASEAN members Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand are also concerned about Suu Kyi s continued prosecution. The US should begin to work with these countries not only on this matter, but also on the elections that Myanmar military junta has promised for 2010.

The Burmese monks, together with nuns in pink robes, were soon joined by students, actors, and others who want to be rid of the military junta. But it was the monks and nuns who took the first step they dared to protest when others had mostly given up.

Similarly, Erdoğan s recent visit to Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia brings out the ambivalence of Turkey s new claim to regional hegemony. While Egypt s shaky military junta welcomed Erdoğan, many Egyptians were not happy about his hectoring them and other Arabs to follow Turkish policies and to regard Turkey as their Muslim leader.

But almost all of the parties put female candidates at the end of their lists as a result, only nine women were elected to the parliament. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the ruling junta, appointed two more women, bringing the share of women MPs to about 2 .

The assassination of Aung San (Suu Kyi s father and the leader of Burma s independence movement) destabilized the country, paving the way for the army to take over. Under its long serving military junta, Burma shut itself off from the world, internalized its problems, and stagnated as the rest of Asia boomed.

Huge amounts of corporate money from Coca Cola and Adidas went sloshing through the system, all the way to the roomy pockets of Third World potentates and, allegedly, of Havelange himself. Coke was the main sponsor of the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, ruled in those days by a brutal military junta.

Burma s peaceful protests are nearing their tipping point, with the military junta weighing the potential costs of a full military crackdown. But Burma s generals will have little incentive to opt for an alternative to bloodshed and repression if China continues to provide them with support and protection against sanctions at the UN Security Council.

It would not be acceptable to argue that to bomb a city on the mainland was necessary in order to compel the Argentine population to put pressure on the military junta to withdraw from the islands. So bombing Buenos Aires in that context would have been unnecessary and therefore could not possibly qualify as proportionate.

As the death toll mounts from the cyclone that struck a densely populated area of Burma stretching from the Irrawaddy Delta to the capital city of Rangoon continues to soar, the country s military dictatorship is pressing ahead with efforts to consolidate its power. The junta leaders have done little to facilitate recovery efforts in the wake of the disaster.

Indeed, China s pandering to dictators in its quest for resources contradicts its long term interest in being acknowledged as a benign and legitimate power and commanding the international respect that it craves. Had China put pressure on the Burmese junta to stop slaughtering its own people, it would have earned substantial moral credit around the world.

For a monk to involve himself in politics or to hold a political post is contrary to the ethical code of Theravada Buddhism. But in Burma today, this spiritual philosophy, rooted in compassion and non violence, has assumed unexpected dimensions of defiance and recalcitrance, as monks challenge the hegemony of the military junta that rules our country.

After years of turmoil, lower ranking officers headed by Captain Moussa Dadis Camara took power in December 2008 in what was a widely supported and peaceful takeover. Both the European Union and the United States immediately reacted by threatening the ruling junta with a total cut off of aid unless constitutional rule and elections were restored.

When Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 after an abortive attempt by the Greek military junta in Athens to carry out Enosis (unification with Greece), 250,000 or so Greek Cypriots were uprooted from their homes. Some fled in terror from the invading army, some were expelled the usual complex, morally problematic picture that emerges in such situations.

Three key factors have defined Thai politics over the past year. First, unlike tried and tested post coup arrangements from the past, the junta that seized power last May, the National Council for Peace and Order, chose to rule directly, with the coup s leader, General Prayut Chan ocha, assuming the premiership, rather than appointing a recognized and capable figure to the position.

The dilemma for the junta is that Thaksin s supporters who are plentiful enough to have enabled his parties to win every election since 2001 have been marginalized as well, with little say in the face of martial law and Prayut s absolute rule. Though they have remained quiet since the coup, they will undoubtedly maneuver to re enter the fray as new political opportunities emerge.

Of course, the junta hopes to lay the groundwork for the future political order now, on its own terms, by adopting a new constitution. This effort which has so far entailed the creation of the 36 member Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) and the 250 member National Reform Council to help write the new constitution marks the third key factor influencing domestic politics over the past year.

The junta can do worse than releasing and working with Aung San Suu Kyi, who still has sufficient status and appeal to rally public support for a peaceful transfer of power to civilian rule and, in due course, to a democratic government. It may be morally repulsive to allow the junta s members to retire with their ill gotten gains, but any alternative will exact a dramatically higher price from Burma s people.

Subsequently, by its resolution 1156 (1998) of 15 March 1998, the Council lifted the oil embargo and, by its resolution 1171 (1998) of 5 June 1998, confirmed the removal of sanctions on the Government and reimposed the embargo on the sale or supply of arms to Sierra Leone other than to the Government, as well as the travel ban on leading members of the Revolutionary United Front and of the former military junta.