Dear friends,
 Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced today, but it's the Burmese generals who jailed her who have committed the real crimes. Join the call for justice for the Burmese people by signing the petition to put the generals on trial. |
Today, the ailing
Nobel laureate and democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced to another year and a half in detention by a Burmese kangaroo court.
Suu Kyi's treatment is just the tip of the iceberg of the brutality of the Burmese regime --
spanning 40 years of murder, torture, mass rape, and slave labour. It's time for the world to put the Burmese generals on trial. Avaaz is launching a call for the UN Security Council to
investigate the regime for crimes against humanity -- a judgment of guilt could lead to prosecution of top generals by the International Criminal Court.
Click below to join the call and see a mock up of a banner that we plan to drop in front of the UN calling for action:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/jail_the_generals Over the next two months the UK and the US hold the powerful Presidency of the United Nations Security Council - both President Obama and Prime Minister Brown have spoken passionately about Burma,
so now is our best chance in years to get the Security Council to act. But the US, UK and other Council members are still dragging their feet -- concerned about challenging China, a key sponsor of the Burmese regime. If a global outcry demands it, they will try harder to get China to agree, as happened when
the Council decided to allow prosecution of another China-sponsored regime in the case of Darfur, Sudan. Calls for investigation and prosecution of the Burmese Generals have been growing. The pressure is building on Obama and Brown as already dozens of US and British legislators have called for an inquiry.
And a recent Harvard University report by top global jurists reveals that the UN has already quietly documented the forced recruitment of tens of thousands of child soldiers, more than one million refugees and internally displaced persons, numerous cases of killings and torture, mass rape and
the forced displacement of 3,000 ethnic minority villages -- as many as reported in Darfur. Let's join them in this call to hold the regime to account:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/jail_the_generals The Avaaz community has stood with and supported the Burmese people through cyclone Nargis, through the massive repression of democracy activists in 2007, and this year over 400,000 of us have called for the release of political prisoners. Today, if enough of us act together, we have a chance to call upon the highest body under international law to finally end the tyranny.
Sign the petition and send this on to friends and family to send a clear message to the UN Security Council that the world expects them to lead: With hope,
Alice, Ricken, Brett, Graziela, Paula, Paul, Pascal and the whole Avaaz team.
Sources:
For the politics behind the guilty verdict visit:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8177328.stm Read the Harvard report here:
http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/hrp/newsid=59.html For a United Nations Official's appeal to the Security Council visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/opinion/28iht-edpineiro.html See the Sudan Commission of Inquiry process here:
http://www.unausa.org/Document.Doc?id=253 For the UK MPs call for Commission of Inquiry visit:
http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=38487&SESSION=899 For the US Senators call for a Commission of Inquiry visit:
http://avaazmedia.s3.amazonaws.com/Obama UNSC COI Final 6-15-2009.pdf 
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