Aung San Suu Kyi verdict 'awful and illegitimate'. (11/08/2009)

Foreign office Minister Ivan Lewis called the sentencing of Aung San Suu Kyi 'awful and illegitimate' and said 'we will urge our European partners to ensure EU sanctions are toughened immediately', during an interview with the BBC.

Read the transcript

Peter Dobbie (PD): Let’s get more on Aung San Suu Kyi now, she’s been sentenced to eighteen months’ house detention. Let’s talk to Ivan Lewis who works with the British Foreign Office.

Mr Lewis, can you confirm for us, because there do seem to be conflicting reports here, as to the precise series of events in the court.

Ivan Lewis (IV): Well having spoken to our Ambassador just a few moments ago what seems to have happened is that the court sentence was three years’ hard labour for Aung San Suu Kyi, a awful verdict, illegitimate as we know. The regime then moved very, very quickly to say that that would be commuted to eighteen months and it would be served in a house detention rather than any continued time in prison.

Irrespective though of the regime’s response this is a dark day for the people of Burma, it’s a dark day for friends of Burma around the world. These were trumped up charges, it’s a trumped up court case, the verdict and the sentence entirely illegitimate, and all this is about is keeping Aung San Suu Kyi away from elections in 2010. What’s clear as a consequence of today is those elections will neither be free or fair and the international community will not recognise them as being so.

PD: What else can the international community do?

IL: Well we in Britain, the Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the Foreign Secretary David Miliband, have led on this. We, what we will do from today is we will urge our European partners to ensure EU sanctions are toughened immediately. Gordon Brown will be writing to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and the other permanent members of the Security Council which we’re currently presiding over to urge international sanctions including for the first time an arms embargo against the regime. And we’ll be putting pressure and working with the neighbours of Burma, Japan, Thailand, China, to urge them to apply the influence that we know they have over this illegitimate regime.

PD: Okay. Just to interrupt you for a second Mr Lewis, when you talk about sanctions granted the, the point about arms sanctions is fresh, that will take several months to get in to the area, but we’ve had sanctions before, we’ve had the ASEAN countries trying to ratchet up the pressure before, it hasn’t changed. If you or I were the Burmese military dictatorship we might say, well, so what? Do your worst, we will have the elections and she will still be under house arrest.

IL: Well let’s look at what’s happened. Even today they have responded to international opinion. Now it’s entirely unacceptable because the whole basis of the trial is illegitimate, but this regime actually does say, certainly privately to its friends, of which we are not a member clearly that sanctions do hurt, they do have an effect, they do make a difference.

But what is clear too is the rest of the world has got to step up to the mark. Britain has led on highlighting this issue, it’s a personal passion of our Prime Minister who regards Aung San Suu Kyi as a heroic fellow world leader. We know she is the legitimate democratic leader of Burma today and we know if she stood in elections the Burmese people would vote for her in overwhelming numbers.

So to be fatalistic and say there’s nothing we’d, we can do is not the role of Governments and leaders around the world. Britain will provide leadership but we need the support of our European and international partners and we need to send a message today, more than anything else, to Aung San Suu Kyi and the two thousand political prisoners in Burma, we’re on their side, we’re going to fight every step of the way and we will not rest until they are free and until democracy is returned to Burma.

PD: Very, very briefly Mr Lewis, is there a slightly more finessed window of opportunity for dialogue here given that we, we understand Than Shwe hadn’t really made up his mind about the sentence until twenty four or thirty six hours ago? That in his world might be the beginning of some sort of concessionary window in to which people like the UK, the US or indeed the United Nations could step.

IL: Well we’ve offered this regime dialogue. We’ve talked to them about an action plan for an improvement in relations if they released Aung San Suu Kyi and the two thousand one hundred political prisoners. So when you talk about a period of reflection what that has led to is trumped up charges and a trumped up trial. This is now thirteen years that Aung San Suu Kyi has been in some form of detention or another, and this, a most recent act deliberately taken to prevent her from participating in the 2010 elections.

If this regime wants dialogue we stand ready today to have that dialogue. But let’s be clear. From the beginning those political prisoners, Aung San Suu Kyi, have to be released and the elections next year have to be free and fair. That is the international community’s condition for entering in to dialogue.

PD: Ivan Lewis, British Foreign Office Minister, thanks for talking to us here on BBC World News.

စားဆီကိစၥမွာ ဗုိလ္မႈးခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္သိန္းလင္းထင္ရာစုိင္းေနတဲ႕ၿပႆနာက
စားဆီေတြလုိက္သိမ္းေနတယ္လို႕ၾကားတယ္ဗ်ာ့
အဲဒီေတာ့လာသိမ္းရင္ အပါမခံနဲ႕ဗ်ိဳ႕ ။ သူတုိ႕ေရွ႕မွာတင္သြန္ ပစ္လိုက္တာေကာင္းတယ္။
ဘာလို႕လညး္ဆုိေတာ့ သူတုိ႕ကသိမ္းၿပီး ၿပန္ေရာင္းစားမွာဗ်ာ့။ ၿပန္အၿမတ္ထုတ္ပါတာဗ်ာ့
က်ေတာ္တစ္ခါၾကံဳဖူးလို႕ေၿပာတာပါ။
က်ေတာ္လားရႈိးမွာတုန္းက စက္သုံးဆီအေရာင္းဆုိင္ဖြင့္တုန္းကေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ အင္ဂ်င္၀ိုင္ ဓါတ္ဆီ ဒီဇယ္ စတာေတြေရာင္းတုန္းက
စည္ပင္ကုိေရာ မီးသတ္ကိုေရာ ရဲကုိေရာ သူတုိ႕ရဲ႕ လက္သစ္ ၿပည္သူ႕စစ္ကိုေရာ အခြန္ေဆာင္ရတာဗ်ာ့။ တစ္ဖြဲ႕ကုိေပးၿပီးတစ္ဖြဲ႕ကုိမေပးလုိ႕ မရဘူးေလဗ်ာ။
အဲဒီေတာ့္က်ေတာ္ကဆုိင္အလတ္စားပဲရွိေသးတာကိုးဗ်ာ့။ ၿမိဳ႕ၿပင္မွာ လုိင္စင္နဲ႕ဖြင့္တာပါဗ်ာ။ ၿမိဳ႕ထဲမွာလည္း တစ္ဆုိင္ဖြင့္ထားေသးတယ္ဗ်ာ့ ။
အဲဒီေတာ့ၿမိဳ႕ထဲကဆုိင္ကေတာ့ လူၾကီးခရီးစဥ္ရွိလို႕ ဘာလို႕ ညာလုိ႕ ဆုိၿပီး က်ေတာ္ဆုိင္က လာလာပိတ္တာဗ်ာ့
ေနာက္ဆုံးဗ်ာအမွန္ေၿပာရရင္ တုိင္းမႈးသမီးဆုိင္ေရွ႕ကၿဖတ္သြားမွာမုိ႕လို႕ ဆုိင္ကိုပိတ္ရတဲ႕အထိပဲဗ်ာ့
ၿမိဳ႕ထဲကအၿခားဆုိင္ၾကီးေတြက်ေတာ့မပိတ္ဘူးဗ်ာ ။ သူတုိ႕နဲ႕ ဆုိင္တဲ႕ ဆုိင္ေတြၿဖစ္ေနလို႕ေလဗ်ာ။အဲေတာ့က်ေတာ့္မွာ စိတ္ကေပါက္လာေတာ့ ေပးလည္းေပးရေသးတယ္။
လာလာၿပီးေတာ့လညး္ပိတ္ခုိင္းေသးတယ္။ က်ေတာ္လည္း ရဲနဲ႕ စကားမ်ားတာေပါ့ဗ်ာ ။ ဒါနဲ႕ သူတုိ႕က ဆုိင္ကိုပိတ္ခုိင္းေတာ့ က်ေတာ္ကလည္းေပကပ္ကပ္ မပိတ္ပဲနဲ႕ ဆက္ေရာင္းေနတာေပါ့
ဒီေတာ့ သူတုိ႕က မပိတ္လို႕ဆုိၿပီး ဆုိင္မွာရွိတဲ႕ ဆီေတြကုိလာသိမ္္းပါေလေရာ။ က်ေတာ္လည္းဘယ္အပါခံမလည္းဗ်ာ ။ ရႈံးမယ့္အတူတူေတာ့အထူးဘူးေလဗ်ာ။အဲေတာ့သူတုိ႕ေရွ႕မွာတင္ပဲ။
ဆီကုိအကုန္သြန္ပစ္လိုိက္တာ သူတို႕လညး္မရဘူးက်ေတာ္လညး္မရဘူး။သူတုိ႕ကဆီမ၇ေတာ့ ဂါလံခြက္ေတြ ပုံးေတြကုိသိမ္းသြားတယ္ဗ်ာ့။ ၆ သိန္းဖိုးေလာက္ေတာ့ပါသြားတာေပါ့ဗ်ာ့။
ၿမိဳ႕ထဲက က်ေတာ့္ရဲ႕စက္သုံးဆီဆုိင္ေလးကေတာ့ၿပဳတ္သြားၿပီေပါ့ဗ်ာ။
ဒါနဲ႕
ၿမိဳ႕ၿပင္ကတရား၀င္လိုင္စင္နဲ႕ဖြင့္ထားတဲ႕ဆုိင္ကိုေတာ့သူတုိ႕ပရမ္းပတာေတာင္းလုိ႕မရဘူးဗ်ာ။ တရား၀င္ပဲလာေတာင္းၾကတာ။
အဲဒီတရား၀င္ကေတာ့ပုိဆုိးတယ္ထင္တာပဲ။မီးသတ္ရံပုံေငြအတြက္။ တုိင္းရံပုံေငြအတြက္ လူၾကီးခရီးစဥ္အတြက္။ ဘာပေရာဂ်က္အတြက္ ညာပေရာဂ်က္အတြက္
ဘယ္သူလာလုိ႕ဘယ္၀ါလာလုိ႕ စတဲ႕စတဲ႕အေၾကာင္းၿပခ်က္ေတြနဲ႕ပဲ က်ေတာ့္ဆိုင္ၿပဳတ္ခဲ႕ရတာပါပဲဗ်ာ။
က်ေတာ္ကသိန္းရာ ေထာင္ခ်ီၿပီးရင္းနုိင္တဲ႕လူမဟုတ္ဘူးဗ်ာ့ ဆယ္ခ်ီၿပီးေလာက္ပဲရင္းနုိင္တာမုိ႕လုိ႕ၿပဳတ္တာေပါ့ဗ်ာ။တစ္ခ်ိဳ႕ေတြ သိန္းေထာင္ခ်ီၿပီးရင္းထားတဲ႕ဆိုင္ေတြက်ေတာ့
နည္းနည္းမွမကပ္ရဲဘူးဗ်ာ့ ။ သူတုိ႕ရဲ႕သက္ဆုိင္ရာေတြေပ့ါဗ်ာ.
အဲဒီေတာ့က်ေတာ္လညး္မေပးဘူး ရွင္းၿပခဲ႕တာလည္း သူတုိ႕သိပါတယ္ဗ်ာ။ မရပါဘူး။ တစ္ေန႕ေတာ့ၿပႆနာတတ္တာေပါ့ဗ်ာ့။ က်ေတာ္ဆုိင္ကေကာင္ေလးကုိ ဆြဲသြားတယ္ဗ်ာ့
မုိက္ရုိင္းတဲ႕မီးသတ္နဲ႕ရဲေတြေပါ့ဗ်ာ့။ ဆုိင္ကအလုပ္သမားေကာင္ေလးကိုသနားေတာ့က်ေတာ္ကဘယ္ေနနိင္ပါ့မလညး္။ သူတုိ႕ကလည္းမရရေအာင္ယူတာဗ်ာ့.
ေငြေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားကုန္သြားတယ္ဗ်ာ။ အခ်ဳပ္ထဲမွာ လည္းဒီေကာင္ေလး ၂ ညအိပ္ေလာက္ေနလိုက္ရေသးတယ္။အမႈမဖြင့္ရုံးမတင္တာပဲေတာ္ေသးတယ္ေၿပာရမွာပဲ
ကိုယ္ကအၿပစ္မရွိပဲလည္းသူတုိ႕ကေတာ့အၿပစ္ရွာတယ္ေလဗ်ာ။
တကယ္ပါပဲဗ်ာ။ နိင္ရာစားေတြပါပဲ။
အဲဒီေတာ့ အခုစားသုံးဆီကိစၥနဲ႕ပါတ္သတ္လုိ႕ လာသိမ္းရင္ သူတုိ႕ဆီပါသြားတာမ်ိဳးမၿဖစ္ေစနဲ႕ဗ်ဳိ႕ .....
သူတုိ႕ေရွ႕မွာပဲ သြန္သာပစ္လိုက္ဗ်ာ။ ၿဖစ္နုိင္ရင္ေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ ရႈံးမယ့္အတူတူေတာ့ မထူးဘူးေလဗ်ာ။
ခင္မ်ားတုိ႕ကရန္ကုန္မွာမုိ႕လို႕သိပ္မသိရတာဗ်ာ့။
က်ေတာ္တုိ႕နယ္စပ္ေတြမွာဆုိရင္ သိပ္ဆုိးတာ။
မီးသတ္တုိ႕
ရဲတုိ႕
ၾကံ့ဖြတ္တုိ႕
စြမ္းအားရွင္တုုိ႕
ဘာတုိ႕ညာတုိ႕ေပါ့ဗ်ာ ရွမ္းၿပည္မွာေလ တို္ငး္ရင္းသားေတြကုိသိပ္အနိုင္က်င့္တာဗ်ာ့
စစ္တပ္ဆုိရင္ အရင္ကဆုိ ရွမ္းမိန္းမပ်ိဳေလးေတြ အသက္ေတာင္ ၁၂ ေလာက္ပဲရွိေသးတာ
သူတုိ႕ရဲ႕ စစ္အရာရွိေတြရဲ႕ စိမ္ခံပစၥည္းၿဖစ္သြားရတာဗ်ာ။။ အဲဒီထဲမွာ က်ေတာ့အမ်ိဳးေတာင္ပါသြားေသးတယ္
အခုမွနည္းနည္းေတာ္သြားတာ။
ဒါေပမယ့္
တစ္ခုေလ်ာ့သြားရင္တစ္ခုကပိုဆုိးလာတယ္ဗ်ာ့
မလြယ္ဘူးဗ်ိဳ႕
သတိထားၿပီးေနက်ေပါ့ဗ်ာ။
ဘုရားရွင္ေဟာထားတဲ႕ အပၸေဒေနဘိကၡေ၀သမၼာေဒထ ဆိုတဲ႕စကားကိုေတာ့လက္မလႊတ္နဲ႕ဗ်ိဳ႕
အခုေခတ္က တရားလက္မဲ႕တဲ႕ေခတ္။ လူယုတ္မာလူရမ္းကားေတြ ၾကီးစိုးတဲ႕ေခတ္ဗ်ာ့
ဒါပါပဲဗ်ာ
ဒါက်ေတာ့ရဲ႕ကုိယ္ေတြ႕ေနာ္ လုပ္ၾကံေၿပာတာမပါဘူးအမွန္ေတြပဲ
ေနာက္ၾကဳံရင္ ရွမ္းေတာင္သူေတြလယ္သိမ္းခံရတဲ႕အေၾကာင္းေၿပာၿပဦးမယ္
အသိမ္းခံရတဲ႕အထဲမွာ က်ေတာ့္အမ်ိဳးေတြပါတယ္ဗ််ာ့
ဒါပဲေနာ္
က်န္းမာၾကပါေစ
စိရံတိဌတုသဒၶေမၼာ
သုခိအတၱာနံပ၇ိဟႏၱဳ
ခ်စ္ေသာ .. စုိင္းသိခၤ ( ေတာင္ၾကီး )
မစုိးရိမ္ေက်ာင္းသာေဟာင္း