OPINION

Benchmarking Burma

By BENEDICT ROGERS
FROM TODAY'S WALL STREET JOURNAL ASIA
August 15, 2008

The United Nations special envoy on Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, is expected to
arrive in Rangoon in the next few days for another round of talks with the
country's military regime. If his visit is to have any meaning, he must move
beyond the U.N.'s traditional diplomatic niceties and make concrete demands
for change.

Since 1990, U.N. envoys have made 37 visits to Burma. The Human Rights
Council and General Assembly between them have passed more than 30
resolutions, and the Security Council has made two Presidential Statements.
All of this has had little effect. Vague requests to the junta to engage in
dialogue with democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, made without any deadline,
have led nowhere. She remains under house arrest, just as she has been for
12 years.

So rather than more of the same, the U.N. must present the regime with
specific benchmarks for progress, accompanied by deadlines. The first
benchmark should be the release of political prisoners, who currently number
over 2,000. Many are in extremely poor health due to bad prison conditions,
mistreatment, torture and the denial of medical care. Mr. Gambari should
insist that the junta release political prisoners before U.N.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's visit to Burma in December. And Mr. Ban
should be willing to cancel his trip if the junta doesn't comply.

Another important benchmark would be immediately ending the military
offensive against civilians in eastern Burma, which has destroyed 3,200
villages and displaced more than a million people since 1996. The junta has
destroyed twice as many ethnic villages as has the Sudanese regime in
Darfur. Burma has the highest number of forcibly conscripted child soldiers
in the world.

Setting such benchmarks with realistic deadlines would enable Mr. Gambari to
evaluate the progress he is or isn't making. If the junta complies, so much
the better. But if it misses the benchmarks, that would clearly signal the
need for international action.

The international community could impose several powerful sanctions for
failure to meet these benchmarks. One would be revoking the junta's
credentials to represent Burma in world bodies like the U.N. The junta is an
illegitimate government, having overwhelmingly lost elections in 1990 and
proven itself negligent in its handling of Cyclone Nargis. According to the
U.N., more than a million cyclone victims have still not received help. The
U.N. also says the regime has been stealing millions of dollars of aid money
through its below-market fixed exchange rates. The junta is unfit to govern,
and there is a legitimate alternative in the form of the leaders elected in
1990 now living as a government in exile.

Beyond that, a universal arms embargo should be imposed through the Security
Council -- and maximum pressure placed on China and Russia not to use their
veto. Major financial centers such as Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore, as
well as the European Union, should impose carefully targeted financial
sanctions against the ruling generals' personal assets. And the
international community should call the generals by name for what they are:
criminals. The prosecution of Sudan's leader Omar al-Bashir and the capture
of Radovan Karadzic have set a precedent. Burma's generals should be brought
to account in the International Criminal Court or through another
jurisdiction.

The U.N.'s credibility is on the line to an unusual degree in Burma, given
the obvious illegitimacy of the regime and the obvious harm it's doing to
its people. Mr. Gambari owes it both to the Burmese people and to the U.N.
to try a different, and hopefully more productive, approach on this trip.

Mr. Rogers is advocacy officer for South Asia at Christian Solidarity
Worldwide and the author of "A Land Without Evil: Stopping the Genocide of
Burma's Karen People" (Monarch Books, 2004).