Burma didn't succeed.

A Democratic Burma?

China s Burma Test

Cry, Beloved Burma

India s Burma Dilemma

The Rape of Freedom in Burma

How to Help Burma

In a statement issued on September 27, ASEAN foreign ministers expressed a surprising degree of condemnation of the crackdown in Burma. They could play an essential leading role in a process including the Burmese parties, China, India, the European Union, Russia, and the United States that could devise a roadmap for change in Burma.

Burma to Myanmar and Back?

The Burma Road Goes Through Beijing

It's held every two years in Burma.

As most of you know, she's a hero for democracy in her country, Burma.

But trade has not been China s only motivation for investing so heavily in Burma. China also views Burma as vital to its quest for security, as well as to the regional expansion of Chinese power.

In 1885, during an earlier era of great power competition in Asia, Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill s father, impulsively annexed Burma to the British Raj in India following the Third Anglo Burmese War. Thant Myint U, a leading historian of contemporary Burma (and the son of former United Nations Secretary General U Thant), likened Churchill s move to throwing Burma off a cliff.

Sadly, in Burma Myanmar, human rights and democracy continue to be denied.

And my heroine here like Satish's is Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma.

The Women's League of Burma, 11 individual organizations of Burmese women came together because there's strength in numbers.

Consider the debate now underway in Myanmar or Burma to some. Because the imperial tongue found it difficult to pronounce Myanmar, the country s no nonsense British masters renamed it Burma (redrawing its borders as well for good measure).

It may be something that is perhaps more serious as I said, human rights in Burma.

The Million Signatures Campaign of women inside Burma working together to change human rights, to bring democracy to that country.

Only in 1937, by a decree of the British viceroy, was Burma finally separated from British India. But the Japanese invasion five years later subjugated Burma and its people to colonial rule once again, with the conquering sweep of the Imperial Japanese Army checked only at Imphal, in India s Manipur state.

Such an international process simply cannot happen without China. The road to change in Burma runs through Beijing.

Systematic sexual violence became visible in Burma when the Shan Women s Action Network (SWAN) and the Shan Human Rights Foundation (SHRF) published Licence to Rape , which documents 625 cases of rape committed by the military in eastern Burma between 1996 and 2001. The report noted that nobody had been prosecuted.

Given that spirit and appropriate foreign assistance I am confident that it will all work out for Burma, too.

Burma is in chains, Zimbabwe is a human tragedy, in Sudan thousands of people have died unnecessarily for wars that we could prevent.

China, too, has endeavored for centuries to bind Burma to itself, mostly in search of a southern route to India and the Indian Ocean. In recent decades, China took advantage of the international community s shunning of Burma to secure its own strategic interests, building highways, railways, ports, and pipelines that connect southern and western China to the Indian Ocean.

Moreover, unlike Poland when communism collapsed, Burma already has powerful business tycoons flourishing under the existing system and they mean to maintain and develop their privileges. Above all, there is no immediate international institutional context encouraging steady change and establishing standards and benchmarks Burma must find its own path.

Earlier this month, I visited Burma, where I met President Thein Sein and the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as former political prisoners and many other activists. I came away convinced that Burma is a country on the move and moving firmly in a good direction.

Moreover, China s rulers are focused on the looming 17th Congress of the Communist Party, which could likewise be spoiled by a bloody confrontation in Burma.

In fact, if you see the map, the range of their original habitat was all the way from the Indus in Pakistan to the Irrawaddy in Burma.

For Thant, this strategic competition is worrying. The crossroads through Burma, he argues, cannot be a simple joining up of countries, because the regions of China and India that are being drawn together over Burma are among the most far flung parts of the two giant states, regions of unparalleled ethnic and linguistic diversity .isolated upland societies that were, until recently, beyond the control of Delhi or Beijing.

Its long term viability requires the development over time of a full banking union, fiscal union, economic union, and eventually political union. But the process of further European integration has stalled.

Amphetamine drugs produced in eastern Burma seem to be transported with such ease that significant quantities have been found in northeast India, on Burma s western border. That, together with the heroin that is trafficked from Burma to India, China, Thailand, and other countries in the region, poses a serious threat to our political and economic security.

Currently, the eurozone is on the threshold of a banking union, with a fiscal union to follow. But, even with only a banking union, the pressure toward political union will grow.

Mr. Laurin (Canada) said that he would continue to call it Burma so long as its name had not been changed by a democratically elected government.

Soroptimistic Union of Greece

Nuclear cooperation between North Korea and Iran is no doubt assisting both countries to flaunt international norms and now it appears that Burma has joined this axis of illicit nuclear proliferation.

So the stakes in Burma are high for China, as are Chinese fears of about how any future national reconciliation government might react to China s record of complicity with the corrupt military rulers.

This is the case of the Council of Europe, the European Union, OSCE and the African Union.

The Japan Investment Bank s decision to invest in port development in Burma essential if the economy, too, is to be opened is one positive sign that the world will keep pace with Thein Sein step for step. And US President Barack Obama s decision to send Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Burma to meet Thein Sein is another clear sign that the world is ready to end the country s isolation.

To encourage China to take the lead in fostering national reconciliation in Burma, the international community must convince China that pushing for reform and change can be a win win proposition. The international community must make clear that China s interests would be protected during a transition to a more open society in Burma, and that some version of the oil pipeline project will be supported by any new regime.

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?

Representatives of Burundi, the African Union Commission, the European Union Presidency and MONUC attended as observers.

SWAN and SHRF learned of many cases from women who arrived in Thailand. In February 2006, we visited a refugee camp on the Thai Burma border and learned first hand of war and abuse.

There were numerous trade unions for public sector employees, including the Trade Union of Employees of State Institutions, Self Governments and the Finance Sector, the Trade Union of Public Service Employees, the Nursing and Health Care Personnel Trade Union, the Health and Social Care Workers Trade Union and the Education and Science Workers Trade Union.