Burma News (7.28.09)

by Danny Fisher

Image via the BBC.
Here’s the latest news about Burma:

  • Reuters, the Washington Post, and the BBC report that closing arguments have been heard in the ongoing military trail of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s Prime Minister-elect and Nobel Peace laureate, who faces sham charges by the ruling military junta of violating the terms of her house arrest.
  • Though both the Associated Press and Al Jazeera English report on yet another postponement/extension of the trial, the New York Times and CNN report on its nearing end.
  • The Guardian reports that we can expect a verdict this Friday.
  • The Agence France-Presse reports that the junta continues to reject international criticism of their treatment of Suu Kyi.
  • The editors of the Wall Street Journal take U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to task for not being harder on the junta during her recent meeting with their representatives, saying, “Panding to dictators doesn’t pay.”
  • The junta, though, has been very defensive about and critical of her comments, though, as the AP reports.
  • Human Rights Watch blogs for The Huffington Post that “recent amnesties in Burma”–like the big the junta is promising in the run up to the 2010 elections–”have been little more than public relations stunts.”
  • James Gomez, though, writes for the Asia Times about why the elections “will work.”
  • Lastly, the AP reports that Burma may get more money to combat the AIDS epidemic in their country.

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