What Obama Can Do for Burma: The Wall Street Journal

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The news from Burma, my home country, seems to only go from bad to worse. Last week, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi was denied yet another appeal and will remain under house arrest. Last month, Burmese-American human-rights activist Kyaw Zaw Lwin, also known as Nyi Nyi Aung, was sentenced to three-years in prison on trumped up fraud and forgery charges.

This past July, President Obama signed into law the Burma Sanctions Renewal Act, which extended strict sanctions on the country's military junta for three more years. But the administration must also be careful that its policy of "pragmatic engagement" with Burma's military rulers—which began with a visit by State Department officials last November—does not legitimize a fundamentally corrupt regime.

Than Shwe, the senior general who heads the junta, has promised to hold nationwide elections this year, the first since Ms. Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy's landslide victory in 1990 elections—which were nullified by the military. But the election will be a sham, the product of a new constitution pushed through last year by force and intimidation that forbids Ms. Suu Kyi from running for or holding office.

Ms. Suu Kyi, her supporters, and many of Burma's long-persecuted ethnic groups, including the Karen, Karenni and Shan, are rightfully refusing to participate in this charade unless the regime amends the constitution to allow for free and fair elections, a legitimate civilian government and equal rights and representation for all ethnic groups.

But first the regime must release its thousands of political prisoners, including hundreds of monks who took part in the 2007 antigovernment protests known as the Saffron Revolution.

Thus far, however, Gen. Than Shwe has been employing his usual mix of violence, brutality and war. He's rounding up and arresting opposition members and increasing his assault on the Karen and other ethnic minorities, displacing more than 75,000 people in Karen State in eastern Burma in 2009 alone.


This will require Mr. Obama's strong leadership and commitment. His Burma policy objectives are sound: the release of all political prisoners, an end to conflict with ethnic minorities, accountability for human-rights violators, and genuine dialogue among all Burma's stakeholders.