UN Under Fire for 'Failure' in Burma

Source: The Australian

PRO-DEMOCRACY leaders have lambasted the UN's "ineffective" human rights mission to Burma and its "failure" to protect persecuted monks and dissidents who have fled across the Thai border.

Nay Tin Myint, a prominent National League for Democracy leader, was a key figure in the 1988 student uprisings against the government. He spent 15 years in prison before escaping to Thailand just before September's anti-junta protests.

Now designated a "terrorist" and an "enemy of the Burmese people" in junta newspapers, he said the UN mission to Burma was "just not effective".

"Gambari should meet many, many opposition leaders, and the many monks who demonstrated, but (General) Than Shwe did not allow him," he said. "The UN Security Council should issue a strong resolution to the Burmese military.

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