Since 15 August Burma has brought itself back to our attention. Each day sees demonstrators imprisoned for having peacefully protested the rise in fuel prices. The National Convention, which was supposed to relaunch the electoral process, produced nothing, as the opposition parties boycotted it. But there is nothing new here: this has been going on for 50 years now since the independence of Burma and the arrival in power of the military junta. Executions, arbitrary detention, and torture, this country, located at the heart of an Asia undergoing development, has an apocalyptic look to it. The phenomenon of child soldiers (numbering 70,000) and political prisoners (more than 1,000), forced labour, and discrimination against and violence towards the ethnic minorities persist.
One might almost forget amidst this generalized repression that a 62-year-old woman, 15 of those years having been spent in detention, still stands tall, namely Aung San Suu Kyi. She won her victory in 1990, when her party, the National League for Democracy, took 80 per cent of the vote during the country's first and only free elections. Since then ''Asia's Mandela'' has been under house arrest. The aura of her father, the father of Burmese independence, the obtaining of a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, and her children's petitions to the junta, nothing has done any good. What is the international community doing? It is clearly necessary that someone should say that all it has attempted has failed. The United Nations? Its envoys have been coming back empty-handed for 20 years now. She has adopted a consistent stance of having no further political relations with the ruling junta. Internationally renowned artists like Bono, U2, Sting, Peter Gabriel, and Paul McCartney have ceasel! essly pleaded ''for the Lady.'' In vain. Desmond Tutu and Vaclav Havel pitched their moral force into this struggle in 2006, pleading for a UN Security Council resolution in favour of democratic reforms in Burma. China and Russia opposed it.
And where is France in all this? Amidst this chorus of desolation I am convinced that it does have a role to play. All the democracies have already called for the release of the political prisoners. But words will not suffice. We must intensify our efforts to get Burma back into a process of democratization. That first requires close collaboration with the Asians. Because all that we do without them we would risk doing against them. It is important therefore that Asia take concrete measures to end the repression in Burma. Its own interest is at stake.
It is also important that France apply the international agenda as closely as possible. In a few weeks' time I will be chairing a working meeting on child soldiers at the United Nations in New York. The European Union will present a resolution there on the human rights situation in Burma. Our country will have to use its full weight to convince our European partners of the failure of our strategy and the urgent need to rethink it. This is a moral obligation.