EU gets tough with Burmese junta

The EU threatened Burma’s military junta with new sanctions today unless they free opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest by October 8.

The 25 EU foreign ministers, meeting in Brussels. Said the human rights situation in Burma, also known as Myanmar, “has not improved significantly and continues to give rise to grave concern".

The ministers said that if 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner Suu Kyi, the widow of an Oxford don, is still in custody when the two-day EU-Asia summit opens in Vietnam, the EU will expand its current visa ban for senior Burmese officials and their families.

The EU also wants Suu Kyi’s pro-democracy party to be given a role in writing a new constitution.

The ministers have already agreed on other sanctions unless Suu Kyi is freed: banning EU firms from financing companies in Burma and voting against such funding from international organisations.

The EU will also boost aid for health and education projects in Burma through non-governmental organisations, and will make efforts to help eradicate illegal logging in the country, the EU foreign ministers said in a statement.

The threat of additional sanctions is a face-saving gesture. Initially, the EU had objected to Burma attending the Hanoi summit at all because of its human rights record.

However, Asian nations countered that if Burma was barred from the meeting, they would veto attendance by Malta, Cyprus and 10 East European nations that joined the EU in May.

The EU was left with few options but to threaten new sanctions and say its leaders will use the Hanoi summit “to confront Burma with concerns on human rights and the need for democratic reforms.”

Suu Kyi has been detained since May last year, following a violent clash between her followers and a pro-government mob.