Posted on: Wednesday, May 8, 2002

EDITORIAL
Myanmar: 'new dawn' for struggling people?

Twelve years ago, the people of Burma turned out to open what they hoped was a new era of democracy. They voted overwhelmingly for a new parliament. The army was defeated, the National League for Democracy won.

In the ensuing decade, the dictatorship instead smashed their hopes. The elected parliament never met. The leader of the winning party, Aung San Suu Kyi, was, for much of that period, imprisoned in her home.

The junta has made Burma, now called Myanmar, the poorest state in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, offering no hope out of poverty. It has made Myanmar an international pariah, allowing drug trade on a grand scale. It has brutalized its own people on a scale seldom seen in the least-civilized nations.

Now this regime has taken a welcome and important first step toward political reconciliation in releasing Suu Kyi and promising to release other political prisoners.

But this is not the first time Suu Kyi has been released from house arrest with great fanfare. And whether the junta will honor its broader promise to allow all citizens to engage freely in politics remains to be demonstrated. If it does, we could be on the brink of a new era of cooperation in fighting terrorism, eradicating narcotics, promoting public health and ending hunger, and re-engaging with the nations that have levied sanctions against the regime.

A hopeful world now awaits the follow-through of Myanmar's generals.