Burma must be excluded from the ASEAN summit meeting in Hanoi because the regime refuses free elections. This demand was made today Thursday shortly before the official beginning of the annual summit in the Vietnam capital Hanoi . In their joint call the delegates from Indonesia , Malaysia , Cambodia , Singapore and the Philippines urged the ASEAN heads of state to confer on the exclusion from this council of a country ruled by a dictator.

" Burma ’s membership renders the credibility of the ASEAN null and void”, was the approving comment of the Asia consultant of the Society for Threatened Peoples STP (Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker GfbV). "A dictatorship which commits crimes against humanity is ill at place in a union which in accordance with the ASEAN charter has chosen as its motto "democracy, constitutional rule and good government).”

The electoral laws announced by Burma ’s junta have roused indignation among the parliamentarians of the south-east Asian countries. These laws require the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) to expel from the party the leader, Aung Suu Kyi, who has been under house-arrest for 14 years, if it wishes to take part in the elections, which are scheduled for October 2010. The NLD responded by calling out last week for a boycott of the elections.

"The farce of the elections is however merely the tip of an iceberg of violations of human rights”, said Delius. "Forced labour, rape as a weapon of war, the refusal to ethnic minorities of civil rights, arbitrary arrests, unjust court hearings – almost all international human rights conventions are systematically infringed by Burma ’s government. This junta should not be present at the conference table of the ASEAN, but at the International Court of Justice.”

The non-Burmese nationalities (Karen, Shan, Rohingya, Karenni, Chin, Mon &c) have suffered the worst violations of human rights. Members of these ethnic groups make up the largest part of the 700,000 displaced persons and the more than one million citizens of Burma who have fled to the neighbouring countries.

Ulrich is available for further information at asien@gfbv.de.