BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) – Amnesty International on Monday urged the U.N. Security Council to impose a mandatory arms embargo on Myanmar, and urged the country’s main arms suppliers _ China and India _ to suspend all deals.

“It is unacceptable for states to continue to supply arms to a government that is already responsible for persistent serious violations of human rights and which now resorts to violence against peaceful demonstrators,” Khan was quoted as saying.

The U.N. embargo should remain in place until the junta takes real steps to improve the human rights situation, the statement said.

Amnesty also called on the principal suppliers of arms to Myanmar, particularly China and India, in addition to Russia, Serbia, Ukraine and Southeast Asian nations, to stop arms deals with Myanmar.

Since 1988, Amnesty said, China has supplied Myanmar’s army with a range of military equipment. India is also reported to have agreed to supply military equipment to Myanmar, Amnesty said.

Read more http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/10/1/apworld/20071001184941&sec=apworld

But that policy may no longer be tenable, because it is in China’s interest to find an effective alternative to a brutal crackdown, which would only remind the world vividly of the massacres in Yangon in 1988 and in Tiananmen Square the following year.
With some international celebrities already keen to start a campaign to boycott the Beijing Olympics because of China’s support for some of the world’s most repressive and incompetent regimes, a military crackdown in Myanmar is the last thing the Chinese authorities can afford.
Moreover, China’s rulers are focused on the looming 17th Congress of the Communist Party, which could likewise be spoiled by a bloody confrontation in Myanmar.

Yet China may be able to pre-empt such an outcome by making the option of a brutal crackdown prohibitively high to the Myanmar regime.
Read more http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Tuesday/Columns/20071002072320/Article/index_html

Forced evictions have increased as Beijing clears entire neighborhoods to make room for Olympic sites and to beautify the city. An official with the Beijing Municipal Administration of State Land, Resources and Housing has indicated that some 300,000 people are scheduled for relocation to accommodate beautification projects alone. With courts offering little protection, residents have banded together to protest collusion between developers and local officials who forcibly evict them from their homes or sell off the land they have been farming. Residents rarely win, in part because land is not individually owned. In mid-September, Beijing municipal authorities shut down over 50 unregistered schools for children of migrant workers, leaving tens of thousands of children without access to education. This followed a discussion by the authorities about ways to expel one-million migrant laborers from Beijing.
Please read more about Chinese government’s atrocities on its own citizens at http://www.tayzathuria.org.uk/bd/2007/1/21/mhbdl.htm

China used to protect Myanmar at the UNSC with the veto, claiming that it does not want to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. But actually this protecting of the criminal SPDC with veto is actually against the majority (more than 80% according to the last election) of Burmese population’s interest. Because of this, Chinese Embassies around the world were protested.
Please change your policy of protecting or shielding the criminal SPDC at UNSC and international arena. If not, we are going to increase our campaign to boycott Chinese Olympics, support Taiwan Independence, Tibet’s struggle, Yunan Chinese Muslims, Turkic peoples of Xinjiang (Sin-kiang, Uyghur, East Turkestan or Urghurstan) Muslims, Kazakhs Hui Muslims, Kyrgyz Muslims, Uzbek Muslims, Tajik Muslims, Mongolian liberation and Falun Gong Buddhists’ freedom of religion.