Just the other day our country hosted East Timorese President Dr Jose Ramos-Horta on some official trip and our president Anni and Dr Jose Ramos-Horta did call for the release of popular Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from her house arrest. But they should not have stopped at that name. There are many worthy prisoners held in caged prisons across the world and we need not be selective echoing only the trendy names while forgetting the rest in more precarious situations. If Dr. Aung San Suu Kyi were asked, she certainly would not ask world leaders to call for her own release from house arrest while being silent about 1.5 millions Gazans in virtual house arrest in Palestine.
Aung San Suu Kyi, the popular opposition leader of Burma has been living under house arrest and other various forms of detentions for the better part of the last two decades. So we call upon the The military dictatorship of General Than Shwe to set her free and allow her to live in dignity and peace.
Calling for the release of detained important people throughout the world is quite common and a commendable part of modern day diplomacy and its met with varying degrees of success. The case of Aung San Suu Kyi is the most poignant example of such calls. It can safely be said that few world leaders would not have made this call for Burma to release her and yet General Than Shwe doesn’t seem to take notice.
Further north up in middle east, an equally illustrious figure is also kept in detention but this time the accused was abducted tried and sentenced for 5 live sentences in a court case which is fraught with legal loopholes the size of … well, quite big holes. The illustrious figure is Marwan Barghouti, the Mandela of Palestine. With the close connections our newly elected democratic government has with Israel, the government is advised to say a few good words of Marwan Barghouti and hopefully ask for a presidential pardon for him at least as a gesture of goodwill to kick start the stalled peace process…
In the same lines it would be also advisable for Anni to call on the abductors of Gilad Shalit to release him as his capture has already cost the population of Gaza an unimaginable amount of destruction of property and thousands of innocent Gazan civilians.
Nor would it do much harm to call for the release of Dr. Afiya Siddiqui, the Americans have abducted from Pakistan and kept in detention without any charge up until quite recently and now being charged with attempted murder of American servicemen. Trumped up charges no doubt to cover for the more than 5 years of their abduction of her in the first place.
Maldives Resort Workers 