Suraphong Jayanama, former ambassador and spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the international community should take a more proactive stance towards gross human rights violations in Burma. However, Asean should bear the main responsibility as it had accepted Burma into its fold.

"It must push the issue to the Security Council," Suraphong told a symposium organised by the Thai Action Committee for Democracy in Burma (TACDB) to commemorate the 18th anniversary of the People's Uprising in Burma on August 8, 1988.

Suraphong said Asean should come up with a common stance towards Burma. However, because a number of Asean member states are not truly democratic themselves, they tended to be reluctant to interfere for fear that eventually they too will be pulled up for lack of genuine democracy.

Problems such as gross human rights violations, disease, migrant labour, drugs and environmental exploitation in Burma have started affecting its immediate neighbours, especially Thailand, Suraphong said.

"In the past, Asean managed to hang on by sticking to the Asean way of saving face, which is nothing more than a time-buying tactic for Burma," Suraphong said, adding that the issue of human security should supersede the traditional notion of national security.

Suraphong said he had lost all hope of action from the Thaksin Shinawatra administration. "This government has too much interest [in Burma] to engage in anything constructive," he said.

Outgoing senator Jon Ungpakorn, a Thai representative at the Asean Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus, said the junta leaders could be tried for crimes against humanity in the International Court of Law like former Yugoslavian leaders and that sufficient evidence existed to support the charges.

Jon listed forced labour, state-induced violence and systemic rape of civilian women by the military among the crimes committed by the junta. He blamed the lack of a common stance among the international community for the problems in Burma continuing for so long.

Jon said he was placing his hopes on the next government, not Thaksin's, and on the incoming Senate.

The event was attended by about 200 Burmese in exile, who laid white roses and sang songs. Sann Aung, representing the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB), said change would have to come from both within and outside Burma. He said the struggle inside Burma was still on as dissidents continued to be prosecuted.

Subhatra Bhumiprabhas,

Pravit Rojanaphruk

The Nation