Causecast

by KAREN MURPHY, Contributing Writer

Good news for Aung San Suu Kyi: the divisional Burmese court has agreed to hear an appeal by her lawyers. The appeal was filed earlier this week, asking to overturn the previous ruling denying her request to call an additional three witnesses for her defense.

To be clear, at present Aung San Suu Kyi has been able to call only one witness. The prosecution has fourteen. She’s only asking for three more.

Fair? Hardly, but fair hasn’t exactly been the story of 13 of Aung San Suu Kyi’s past 19 years. Those 13 years are the ones the Nobel Prize laureate and human rights activist has spent under house arrest. She now faces a five-year prison sentence if she is convicted of violating the terms of her house arrest from charges that stem from an incident early last month, when she allowed American John Yettaw to stay at her lakeside house in the main city of Rangoon overnight after he swam there uninvited.

Nor has "fair" anything much to do with the people of Burma that Aung San Suu Kyi has been fighting to protect. Burma is now considered the Darfur of Asia, with a reported one million people having to flee from some 3,000 villages in the eastern part of the country, and now living as refugees and internally displaced persons.

What’s worse is that the United Nations apparently knows all about the human rights abuses taking place in Burma, which likely constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes, yet so far has done little about it.

We can’t afford to drop our gaze from Burma, and the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi is central to maintaining a grip on the potential to create fairness once again for the people of Burma.

The appeal will be heard on Friday, the date originally scheduled for closing arguments in the case. Those have been postponed.

What can you do?

Give to the Human Rights Action Center.

Write to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Sign a petition to free political prisoners in Burma.

Write to your elected officials, even if you already have.

The more noise we can make with this, the more pressure the free people of the world put on their leaders, the faster we will create change. We can’t afford the unjust imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi and we can’t afford the human rights abuses that are happening right now to the people of Burma. Make your voice heard.

Image by Ludovico Sinz, flickr