days "are numbered," and she is "heading for a tragic end."
The ominous condemnation issued Wednesday, July 5, said Suu Kyi, 61, was in "her final days," and guilty of "betraying the national cause while relying on aliens," including the United States, Britain and the European Union.
The Nobel Peace Laureate remains under house arrest inside her two-story villa in the former capital, Rangoon, where she has languished for more than 10 of the past 16 years. Her National League for Democracy party (NLD) won a landslide election victory in 1990, which the military ignored.
"Attempts to translate into reality the 1990 election results are in vain," the military junta said.
"The days of [Mrs.] Suu Kyi and the NLD are numbered. They are heading for a tragic end," the government said in its official English-language newspaper, The New Light of Myanmar, monitored by BosNewsLife in Bangkok, Thailand.
HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
Burma, also known as Myanmar, is the biggest country in mainland Southeast Asia, and one of the world’s worst human rights abusers, according to London-based Amnesty International, US-based Human Rights Watch, and other monitors.
The government’s harsh litany against Suu Kyi comes amid demands by Washington that the United Nations Security Council push Burma to release her, along with hundreds of other political prisoners, and allow her National League for Democracy to form a government.
Armed rebels of several persecuted Christian minorities, including the Karen, would be ready to accept her as their leader as she wants to unify the nation with respect for human rights and democracy, BosNewsLife learned inside Burma last year.
Next-door China, however, is Burma’s strongest military, economic and political ally and uses its seat on the Security Council to block attempts to pressure the Burmese leaders to introduce democracy, analysts say.
MORE HOUSE ARREST
Describing the conditions under which she would be freed, the unelected government said, "Definitely, the restrictions imposed on her will be lifted on the day" when Suu Kyi stops demanding democracy. "The restrictions will never be lifted until she abandons her practice of the liberal policy," it said, indicating a possible future renewal of her house arrest, which was extended in May for another year.
Burma is currently suffering US-led, international economic sanctions which are supposed to pressure the government into freeing Suu Kyi and permitting democracy. "Due to the economic sanctions placed by one of the western countries, 160 garment factories had to be closed and 40 factories had to reduce the laborers," the regime said.
"The closure left about 80,000 people, including over 70,000 women, jobless. While struggling for living, some women fell victim to human trafficking." In America, Europe and elsewhere, some critics have said economic sanctions have worsened the plight of unskilled and semi-skilled workers, especially women in Burma’s garment industry.
Many females have resorted to prostitution and other desperate measures to make ends meet, because of sanctions against foreign investment and the blocking of Burmese exports to the West, observers say.
ENDORSING SANCTIONS
Suu Kyi has endorsed the sanctions, and has asked foreign tourists not to visit the Buddhist-majority country which displays a myriad of ancient temples and quaint towns smothered in what is seen as an atmosphere of political repression, poverty and despair.
The top layers of the regime, meanwhile, circumvent the sanctions by doing business with willing neighbors in Asia, including China, Thailand, India, Malaysia and Singapore. "Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy pose the most dangerous threat to the nation," the report said, blasting them as "traitors relying on foreign countries."
Her NLD is "a rightwing political party following liberalism" and "an anarchist political party."
(Award-winning reporter, photojournalist and author Richard S. Ehrlich has covered Asia for 28 years for a variety of media, including as staff correspondent for United Press International from 1978 to 1984, based in Hong Kong and New Delhi. He also co-authored the non-fiction best seller "HELLO MY BIG BIG HONEY!" — Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews. The book, reviewed by Time magazine and other leading publications, looks beyond the red light of Thailand’s nightlife, and gives a rare insight in the often tragic and difficult relationships between prostitutes and their clients. Ehrlich, who was born in the US and is currently based in Bangkok, received the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s Foreign Correspondent’s Award in 1978. He speaks some Mandarin, Hindustani, Urdu, Thai, Spanish and French. Ehrlich can be reached for assignments and/or more information via website: http://www.geocities.com/asia_correspondent/news.html )
