Burma News (11.24.08)

by Danny Fisher

[This post has been updated as of 6:30 p.m. EST on 11.24.08.]

Here are the latest news items on Burma worthy of your attention:

  • Right on the heels of their handing down of harsh prison sentences to about one hundred democracy activists, the Agence France-Presse reports that the ruling junta has called for all the country to back a controversial “road map” to democracy.
  • The editors of the Washington Post write that addressing the situation in Burma will be “a test of Barack Obama’s attitude toward promoting democracy” when he assumes the office of President of the United States.
  • In his blog for the New Yorker, George Packer writes: “In a just world, the names Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi would be as well known as Steve Biko and Adam Michnik.”
  • And this remarkable item from the Associated Press:
      A lone demonstrator staged a silent protest in front of detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party headquarters Saturday demanding the military government free all student activists as the country celebrated its National Day.

      The holiday commemorates a boycott by Yangon University students 88 years ago in defiance of British colonial rule, a protest that inspired Myanmar’s independence movement