By Tribune | TOKYO - President Barack Obama's administration is reviewing its policy toward Myanmar to see if it can more effectively promote reform in the military-ruled Southeast Asian nation, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday.
Clinton, on her first trip abroad as the top U.S. diplomat, said Washington "is looking at what steps we might take that might influence the current Burmese government and we're also looking for ways that we could more effectively help the Burmese people."
The U.S. Government refers to Myanmar as Burma, the country's name before it was changed in 1989 by the ruling junta.
Washington applies political and economic sanctions against Myanmar because of its poor human rights record and failure to hand over power to a democratically elected government. It also seeks the freedom of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi — who has been detained for 13 of the last 19 years — and an estimated 2,100 other political prisoners.
"We want to see a time when citizens of Burma and the Nobel prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi can live freely in their own country," Clinton said at a town hall meeting at Tokyo University in response to a question from a woman who said she was from Myanmar.
The issue of Myanmar democracy was taken up by former first lady Laura Bush, and had bipartisan backing in Congress. But the junta in Myanmar has shown little inclination to make political reforms, and instead cracked down violently on mass pro-democracy protests in September 2007 and sentenced many dissidents to long jail terms.
Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962. The current junta came to power in 1988 after crushing pro-democracy demonstrations and killing as many as 3,000 people. It called elections in 1990 but refused to honor the results when Suu Kyi's political party won overwhelmingly.
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