Sidiki Kaba, FIDH President, said that “by exercising their veto power, the countries of Russia and China are signing a blank check to the Burmese military regime, enabling the continuation of blatant human rights violations, affecting all Burmese people and the Southeast Asian region, in almost complete impunity. We further deplore South Africa’s opposition, in spite of Desmund Tutu’s call for the resolution. The young democracy had benefited, in its time, of the UN’s mobilisation against the Apartheid regime. Their decision is an affront to all human rights defenders.”
Despite the overthrow of a democratically-elected government in 1990 and the imprisonment of thousands of political prisoners, including of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi; despite the intensification in 2006 of extreme humanitarian and human rights abuses carried out against ethnic minorities - including killings, acts of torture, destruction of villages, the use of rape as a weapon of war and forced labor; despite the fact that the Burmese military junta forces more children to become soldiers than any other country in the world; despite a one-million refugee outflow to neighboring countries; despite the 2006 academic in-depth reports demonstrating the ever-increasing and disastrous spillover effects of Burma’s health crisis to the Southeast Asian region, and directly caused by the regime in power; despite the repetitive international calls for the Security Council to take action on Burma, issued by 13 Nobel Peace Prize winners, leading human rights organizations, celebrities and parliament representatives from all regions in the world; despite all of this, the Chinese and Russian ambassadors both said Burma posed no threat to international security, and that therefore they refused to endorse the resolution.