| Biro Hal Ehwal Antarabangsa |
| SURAT TERBUKA KEPADA PERDANA MENTERI ------------------------------------------------ 2 January 2001 YAB Dato' Seri Dr. Mahathir Bin Mohamad Perdana Menteri Bangunan Perdana Putra Pusat Pentadbiran Kerajaan Persekutuan 62502 Putra Jaya Dear Dato' Seri, Peace and greetings to you. We are very pleased to learn that you are paying a visit to Burma on 3rd and 4th January 2001. We think that this is a golden opportunity for you and our foreign affairs officials to engage in dialogue with the heads of The State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) government on the importance or speeding up the process of change and to improve the situation in Burma, for the sake of the 50 million suffering Burmese people. It is a well-known fact that SPDC and its predecessor, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), have been accused of everything from arbitrary arrest, torture and murder to forced relocation of civilians, forced labor, drug trafficking and sexual slavery. It is widely believed that the army, in co-operation with local warlords, smuggles opium, gold, silver, rubies, teak and other valuable woods across the border. Besides, human rights activists have also documented the forced relocation of more than 300,000 Shan - of a population of eight million - out of SSA-controlled areas in the past three years. The use of forced or unpaid labor for everything from road construction to agriculture remains widespread. We in the Barisan Alternatif (BA) are deeply concerned with the deterioration of the human rights situation in Burma, particularly the level of torture in that country. As Amnesty International reported in early December: "Torture has become an institution in Burma, used throughout the country on a regular basis. Police and the army continue to use torture to extract information, punish, humiliate and control the population." In addition to that, we are also concerned about the situation of the courageous Secretary General of NLD, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi who has been put under house arrest since September 2000. There has been no news of her ever since she was put under house arrest. We hope you will take the opportunity in Burma to pay her a visit, as a gesture of concern for her situation and her untiring struggle for democracy in Burma. It is high time that Malaysia and other ASEAN countries engage in dialogue with both the SPDC and the NLD, and we hope that your trip can start off this new process of engagement. While we in the BA support your concern for the suffering peoples of Iraq and Bosnia, we also hope that you can show the same kind of concern for the millions of oppressed people in Burma. It is important for ASEAN countries to voice our protests and complaints against the human rights violation in Burma to the SPDC government, in the spirit of Constructive Engagement in ASEAN because the instability in Burma will not only bring instability to the ASEAN region, but it also affects the investments of the ASEAN business community in Burma. May God bless you with a fruitful mission and trip to Burma. Yours sincerely, Dr. Syed Azman Syed Ahmad Pengerusi Biro Hal Ehwal Antarabangsa Barisan Alternatif |