French Govt Minister to Raise Burma Question during Thailand Visit

Friday, March 13, 2009

The French government minister responsible for human rights issues, Rama Yade, an outspoken critic of the Burmese regime, began a three-day visit to Thailand on Thursday, during which she will discuss the Burma question with Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya.

Yade, a minister of state in the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, will also visit a refugee camp housing about 20,000 Burmese, most of them Karenni.

A French Foreign Ministry statement said that apart from bilateral issues Yade would discuss with Kasit the Burma situation.

The statement said the objective of her visit to Ban Mai Nai Soi refugee camp in northern Thailand’s Mae Hong Song Province was to strengthen cooperation between the Thai government and major donors of aid to refugees, including the European Union.

Rama Yade is a 32-year-old career politician who was born in Senegal, West Africa. She has made clear her concern for events in Burma at a number of international gatherings, and at an Asean summit in Singapore in November 2007, two months after the September uprising, she said it was time the grouping tackled the challenges posed by Burma.

“After the tragic hours of repression of the pro-democracy movement, fragile hope has appeared for the people of Burma,” Rama Yade said at the summit. “It is naturally for them to maintain and develop it by envisioning the prospects for the future.”

She said she was convinced the EU and Asean can work together for change in Burma. “I’m certain, at any rate, that we must do so, in the interest of the people of Burma,” she said.

In an article carried by the English-language daily Bangkok Post on Thursday, Yade said France and the EU, “far from preaching,” want to “stand alongside Asean, which at the Cha-am/Hua Hin summit recently reaffirmed its wishes for Burma: democracy, freedom and co-operation with the international community.”

France and the EU also wanted to “give the efforts of the United Nations Secretary General every chance,” she said.

“Expectations will, of course, remain high with respect to Burma, where we share the hope of a return to democracy and freedom, for Aung San Suu Kyi, for all political prisoners and for the population as a whole, and with freedom, the hope of a return to economic development,” she said in the article.

“We are willing to assist and support a genuine process of democratisation that respects the choices of the Burmese after an inclusive dialogue between the authorities and the opposition that everyone hopes for.

“We hold out our hand to people of goodwill in Burma to accompany it in the best possible way on its own path towards freedom.”

Yade has repeatedly called for the release of Suu Kyi—most notably in article for the French daily “Le Figaro” in September 2007 and in a statement issued jointly with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in May 2008.

During her stay in Singapore for the 2007 summit, Yade visited a Burmese monastery and the Burmese community there, along with British Parliamentary Undersecretary of State, Meg Munn. They met Burmese monks and activists.

When former Thai Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama visited France in June 2008, Rama Yade discussed the Burma situation with him, including the delays of international relief supplies to the victims of Cyclone Nargis.

A few days after Cyclone Nargis hit Burma, France sent its navy vessel Mistral with 1,000 tonnes of humanitarian supplies to join US and British ships off the Burmese coast. Burmese authorities refused to allow the supplies to be delivered and the ships eventually unloaded their supplies at Thai ports—although French officials reportedly pushed for unilateral action to rush relief to the cyclone victims.

The regime’s refusal of cooperation angered the French government, and a joint statement by the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs and the Ministry of Defense said: “France reiterates that in her eyes nothing can possibly justify disaster victims seeing themselves denied the basic right to benefit from the necessary aid and stresses her commitment to the implementation of the ‘responsibility to protect’ principle under all circumstances.”

irrawaddy