The administration of US President Barack Obama has decided to throw its crucial support behind moves to establish a special UN commission to investigate alleged war crimes perpetrated by the military rulers of Burma.
In what represents a marked rollback of one of President Obama's most controversial foreign policy initiatives, US officials said Washington would now back the war crimes investigation, as urged earlier this year by the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Burma. Washington is also said to be considering tightening sanctions against the junta.
In 1990 Burma held its 4 general election since independence. That election was won in a landslide by Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy. With the outcome decidedly not in its favor the ruling military junta annulled the election and remain firmly in power.
Aung San Suu Kyi the leader of the National League for Democracy has been under house arrest for 14 of the last 20 years a fate she continues today. Burma will elections on November 7 of this year however her party was disqualified by the government and wont participate in the election.
In May of 2008 a cyclone hit Burma causing wide spread death and destruction.
Parts of the Irrawaddy region were hit particularly badly, with three out of four buildings reportedly blown down in one district.
Burma has declared Irrawaddy and four other regions, including the main city Rangoon, to be disaster areas.
Rangoon has been without power and water, its streets full of debris.
Winds of about 190km/h (120mph) battered the Irrawaddy, Rangoon, Bago, Karen and Mon regions.
The latest death toll of 351 includes at least 109 people who lived on Haing-gyi island, off the south-west coast, officials say
Burma's military rulers refused international aid agencies requests to provide assistance to those caught up in the storms aftermath thus insuring that many more people would die needlessly.
The previous year there had been protests against the governments removal of fuel subsidies which were made up the average citizen and were quickly put down by the government. It was when the Buddhist Monks started leading the protests which the junta allowed for several days. On September 28 that all changed with a government crack down leaving an unknown number of people dead and injured.
Should the government of Burma be held accountable for its appalling Human Rights record of course. However one might think President Obama might want to look at the Human Rights violations and other crimes committed by the George W. Bush administration.
Jose Padilla is an American citizen was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare airport in May 2002 and charged with planning a dirty bomb attack on the United States. Mr. Padilla a U.S. citizen was held without trial at the U.S Navel Brig Charleston South Carolina having been declared an Enemy Combatant by President Bush. Jose Padilla was never tired for the original crime he was charged with upon his arrest. During the trial his defense team accused the military of torturing him during his confinement.
Canadian citizen Maher Arar was detained in New York during a stop over there while returning to Canada from a vacation in Tunisia. Accused of being a member of Al Qaeda he was held for 2 weeks in solitary confinement before being deported to Syria the country of his birth but no longer his home. Maher spent almost a year in a Syrian prison before being released and returning to Canada.
In the fall of 2002, Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen on his way home from Tunisia, was pulled out of line by US officials while changing planes at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport. He was locked up for twelve days, much of that time incommunicado, and harshly interrogated. When he was finally allowed to make a phone call, after a week in captivity, he called his mother in Canada, who found him a lawyer.
The lawyer saw Arar on Saturday. The very next night—a Sunday evening—immigration officials held an extraordinary six-hour hearing starting at 9 PM, orchestrated from Washington, D.C. When Arar asked to have his lawyer present, they told him that she had chosen not to participate in the hearing. In fact, the only “notice” they had provided was to leave a message on the lawyer’s office voice mail that Sunday night. She got the message Monday morning, and immediately called the immigration service. They told her, falsely, that Arar was being transferred to New Jersey, and she could contact him the next day. In fact, that night federal agents took him on a federally chartered jet to Jordan, and from there to Syria.
Extraordinary rendition and irregular rendition are terms used to describe the apprehension and extrajudicial transfer of a person from one state to another.[1] "Torture by proxy" is used by some critics to describe situations in which the United States has transferred suspected terrorists to countries known to practice torture.[2][3][4]
It is alleged that the CIA runs a secret global abduction and internment operation of suspected terrorists, known as “extraordinary rendition”, which since 2001 has captured about 3,000 people and transported them around the world. It has been alleged that torture has been employed with the knowledge or acquiescence of the Governments of the United States and the United Kingdom. Condoleezza Rice, then United States Secretary of State, said in an April 2006 radio interview that the United States does not transfer people to places where it is known they will be tortured
These are just of a few of Human Rights and War Crimes that current administration can't bother to investigate or prosecute.
There these as well: Warrant Less Wiretaps: National Security Letters:
Torture of prisoners held by the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan and who authorized it?: Lying America into the war in Iraq: Why the Defense Department failed to provide personal and vehicle armor at the wars start: The disbanding of the Iraqi police and military by Paul Bremer which led to the insurgency.
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