EU lifts Burma sanctions for one year

The European Union has decided to suspend its sanctions against Burma for one year, retaining only its embargo on arms sales.

The EU's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, who will travel to Burma this week, said the bloc aimed to support progress in Burma "so it becomes irreversible". The move is sure to please the government in Burma, and foreign businesses eager to operate there.

The decision will be reviewed in October, and is expected to lift sanctions targeting more than 800 companies in the logging, timber and mining sectors to allow investment in about 50 companies close to the government, and to end visa restrictions and travel bans affecting nearly 500 people.

It follows similar moves by the US and Australia, and was taken on the same day Burma's newly elected parliament convened, without any members of Aung San Suu Kyi's party. Her National League for Democracy (NLD) won 43 of 45 open seats in the 1 April byelection, a victory hailed as proof of the changing face of Burma. But the party is boycotting attendance because of a dispute over one word in the parliamentary oath.

The oath currently requires all parliamentarians to "safeguard the constitution", a phrase Suu Kyi's party dislikes as the constitution reserves 25% of all parliamentary seats for unelected military officers, and was drafted during an era of army rule. The NLD has vowed to amend the 25% regulation once it takes its parliamentary seats. For now, it wants the word safeguard to be replaced with "respect".

The row risks setting off tensions between Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition party and the military-ruled Union Solidarity and Development party, which maintains about 80% of the seats in parliament, and is staffed by former generals, who some analysts worry are not entirely behind the reforms the president, Thein Sein, has instigated since taking office in 2010. These range from freeing political prisoners to signing ceasefires with ethnic rebels to allowing trade unions.

However, Thein Sein told reporters in Tokyo, where he is on a state visit, that he was open to discussing changes to the oath. "It is possible to make a revision if it serves the public's interest," he said.

He said Aung San Suu Kyi was welcome in parliament but added: "She is the one who should decide whether to join."

An NLD spokesman, Nyan Win, said he believed the dispute would be solved shortly and that other party officials in Thein Sein's government supported the NLD's request. "We are co-operating with the government, so the problem will be overcome," he said.

Changes to the constitution usually have to be approved by 75% of parliament, but as the oath is an appendix to the constitution, it is unclear what the next step will be.

The request is seen even by NLD members as highly symbolic, but its importance cannot be overestimated, according to legislators. Phyo Min Thein, one of the NLD's newly elected parliamentarians, said: "We want them to change the wording because it will show the people that the 2008 constitution can be changed."

Some have questioned the EU's decision, taken on the very day the 66-year-old Nobel laureate should have been taking her parliamentary seat along with 42 other members of the NLD.

"The timing does highlight the fact that the EU seems to want to move faster than the pace of reforms in Burma," said Mark Farmaner of Burma Campaign UK. "Not one repressive law has been repealed, human rights abuses have increased in the past year and hundreds of political prisoners are still in jail.

"So the growing suspicion is that the EU is talking up all this 'positive change' in Burma to allow European companies to go in and get there ahead of their competitors. The business delegation that went to Burma [with David Cameron last week] and entered on tourist visas shows just the extent of the gold rush into the country."

Cameron welcomed Brussels's decision in a statement, saying Burma had taken "important steps toward reform … and it is right for the world to respond to them".

He added: "But those changes are not yet irreversible, which is why it is right to suspend rather than lift sanctions for good."

http://www.information.myanmaronlinecentre.com/eu-lifts-burma-sanctions-for-one-year/