Cabinet tomorrow should launch an ASEAN initiative to send high-level mission to Myanmar on disturbing reports of massacre of thousands of protestors by military junta last week

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Media Statement 
by Lim Kit Siang  
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(Parliament, Tuesday) : I have no objection to UMNO Youth deputy leader Khairy Jamaluddin “hijacking” the NGO protests at the Myanmar Embassy yesterday, particularly the Malaysian Youth Coalition for Peace and Freedom in Burma, provided this represents a genuine change of heart and radical policy alteration on democracy and human rights in Burma by UMNO Youth.

The question is whether what happened yesterday was a cynical hogging of the publicity limelight by Khairy with no meaningful commitment by UMNO Youth to the cause of democracy and human rights in Burma or whether it signaled that UMNO Youth is now prepared to join forces with all pro-democracy and pro-human rights activists to mobilize greater Malaysian and ASEAN support to end the long night of savage and bloody dictatorship of the military junta in Burma.

What is most disturbing is the latest claim in the international media that thousands of protestors are dead and that bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle.

Hla Win, 42, a former chief of military intelligence in Rangoon’s northern region and who fled when ordered to help massacre monks who had led last week’s mass protests last week, said the toll of deaths in Burma was in the region of several thousand.

The international media also reported accounts from other exiles along the Thai-Burma border confirming that hundreds of monks had simply "disappeared".

Dissidents hiding along the Burma border said thousands of monks had been locked up and were being beaten inside blood-stained temples.

A Swedish diplomat told the Daily Mail of reports that monks had been tortured and killed in large numbers.

"We were informed from one of the largest embassies in Burma that 40 monks in the Insein prison were beaten to death today and subsequently burned," the diplomat said.

UMNO Youth leader and Education Minister, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein should play a leading role in the Cabinet meeting tomorrow in keeping with the new UMNO Youth policy stance yesterday to secure a two-point Cabinet decision on the latest Burmese crisis, viz:

Launch an ASEAN initiative to send a high-level mission to Myanmar on the disturbing reports of massacre of thousands of monks and protestors by the Myanmar military junta in Burma last week; and

Convene an emergency meeting of Malaysian Parliament to set an example for emergency meetings by all other ASEAN Parliaments to express “revulsion” at another 1988 massacre in Myanmar and to call on China, Russia, India, the United States and the European Union to support an United Nations Security initiative to restore democracy and human rights and to effect national reconciliation in Burma.

If UMNO Youth has truly adopted a new policy supporting democracy and human rights in Burma, I welcome UMNO Youth MPs to fully participate in the work of the Malaysian Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus and the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus (AIPMC) to promote national reconciliation and democratization in Burma, the immediate release of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners and the ending of the reign of repression in Burma with the cessation of all human rights violations and violent suppression of peaceful protests and the re-opening of Burma to communications with the outside world including the restoration of Internet and telephonic communications.

(2/10/2007)