Japan needs to push Myanmar on rights: HRW

Japan needs to push Myanmar on rights: HRW
Thu Apr 9, 2009 8:55 am EDT

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan needs to speak out more on human rights abuses in Asia, especially in military-ruled Myanmar, with which it maintains ties despite criticism from the West, an advocacy group said Thursday.

Japan should freeze all aid to the Southeast Asian nation to press the junta to hold free elections and liberate political prisoners, Human Rights Watch wrote in an open letter to Prime Minister Taro Aso.

"To date, the Japanese government has rarely demonstrated the international leadership of which it is capable by speaking strongly on behalf of victims of human rights abuses," director Kenneth Roth wrote in the letter.

"Your government... should protect human rights globally, including linking aid with human rights benchmarks and imposing sanctions when the human rights situation merits such a response," he added.

Myanmar has since 1962 been ruled by the military, which ignored a 1990 landslide win by Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy and has been condemned for its widespread human rights abuses.

An estimated 2,100 political prisoners are currently imprisoned by the junta, according to New York-based HRW, which opened its Tokyo office Thursday.

Tokyo in 2003 suspended most assistance other than emergency aid and some training funds to Myanmar, and it cut its assistance further after the regime cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrations in 2007.

But Japan refuses to join Western allies in slapping punishing sanctions on Myanmar. China, which often spars with Japan for influence, is Myanmar's main political and commercial partner.

"Though the horrible reputation of the Burmese military government have led to a decrease in Japanese foreign aid and investment, Japan has remained a major donor to Burma to the present," the letter said, referring to Myanmar by it former name.

Myanmar's ruling generals say they plan to hold elections next year under a new constitution approved last year, but critics have called the vote a sham designed to entrench the junta's rule.