Friday, 5 January 2007
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Thirteen Nobel Peace Prize winners called on the UN Security Council to give unanimous support to a US-proposed resolution condemning political repression in military-ruled Myanmar.
"We welcome the recent proposal of a Security Council resolution on Burma (Myanmar), and urge all members to support it immediately," said American Nobel laureate Jody Williams.
She and Iranian laureate Shirin Ebadi spoke on behalf of the 13 in front of the Myanmar embassy in Washington where they joined a group of activists demonstrating against the military junta in Yangon.
"We want to send a message that the world is paying attention, the whole world does care of what the UN Security Council does on this issse," said Williams, who won the Nobel award in 1997 for her campaign to ban landmines.
The Security Council is weighing its first ever resolution on Myanmar after voting in September to place the Southeast Asian state also for the first time on its permanent agenda.
The Nobel laureates said Security Council action would send an "important" signal to Myanmar's military rulers accused of human rights abuses.
The United States last month circulated a draft resolution in the council urging the military rulers in Myanmar to release political prisoners, abort operations against restive ethnic minorities and end the use of rape as an instrument of war.
Russia, the current council chairman, and another heavyweight China could block the resolution, which the US State Department said last week would be pursued "as soon as possible in the new year."
The 13 Nobel laureates from Seoul to Washington also wanted to apply for visas simultaneously on Friday to travel to Yangon to meet with Myanmar's detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.
She is the only imprisoned Nobel peace laureate and has been kept under house arrest for more than 10 of the past 17 years.
Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won a landslide victory in 1990 elections but has never been allowed to take office.
"As the elected leader of the Burmese people, we have to ensure Aung San Suu Kyi's voice reaches beyond the walls that confine her," Williams said.
Ebadi, who received the prize in 2003 for her work in promoting human rights in Iran, and Wiliams were barred from entering the Myanmar embassy building.
"I think their failure to even meet with us is symbolic of the paranoia of the regime. What threat are little Shirin and myself? We are peace laureates. Why is it so threatening to sit down and talk to us? This is tragic," Williams said.
Ebadi said they wanted to visit Suu Kyi "to tell our sister that the world has not forgotten her and the people of Burma, and we want to tell her that we support her movement's call for a UN Security Council resolution."
The Nobel laureates also urged the junta to release the more than 1,100 political prisoners behind bars who, according to the UN, are held in often grim conditions.
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