AP
Posted: 2007-10-02 04:50:59
GENEVA (AP) – The European Union on Tuesday urged the U.N. Human Rights Council to “strongly condemn” the Myanmar government’s violent repression of peaceful demonstrators.
The council convened the session at the request of 18 member states and 37 observers, including the United States, after at least 10 people were killed in the demonstrations.
Testimony was expected from witnesses to the violence, which dissident groups say has actually killed up to 200 protesters, instead of what the regime has officially reported. The dissidents say 6,000 people have been detained in the crackdown.
A resolution proposed by the EU would put the 47-nation council on record as saying it “strongly condemns the continued violent repression of peaceful demonstrations in Myanmar, including through beatings, killings and arbitrary detentions and urges the government of Myanmar to exercise utmost restraint and desist from further violence against peaceful protesters.”
It is the council’s first emergency meeting since December, when the politically divided body examined the situation in Sudan’s region of Darfur.
The crackdown in Myanmar on opposition marches led by Buddhist monks has drawn widespread condemnation.
The EU spearheaded the move for the special session by the Geneva-based rights watchdog. South Korea and Japan were among the member nations supporting the move, which comes following Security Council comment and discussion in the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
In a bid to broker peace, Ibrahim Gambari, the U.N.’s special envoy to Myanmar, reportedly met Tuesday with the leader of the regime, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, and other top generals in the junta’s remote new capital, Naypyitaw.
The EU proposal, expected to be voted on late Tuesday, urges the government of Myanmar, also known as Burma, “to ensure full respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms” and to “bring to justice perpetrators of human rights violations, including for the recent violations of the rights of peaceful protesters.”
It also urges the government to release detainees, including opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, immediately.
The council, which lacks enforcement powers, is limited to focusing global attention on human rights offenders.