U.N. rights council calls for free and fair election in Myanmar
(March 27, 2010) The United Nations Human Rights Council condemned on Friday widespread
violations in Myanmar and called on its generals to release 2,100 political prisoners
ahead of an election this year, saying the vote must be free and fair. It adopted
by consensus a resolution, presented by the European Union, which also extended by
one year the mandate of the Council's special investigator on the former Burma. Tomas
Ojea Quintana, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, called in a report
this month for an international inquiry into possible war crimes and crimes against
humanity committed by the ruling junta. The Council condemned "systematic violations",
including disappearances, arbitrary detentions, torture and ill-treatment of prisoners
and recruitment of child soldiers. It urged Myanmar's government to "ensure a free,
transparent, fair electoral process which allows for the participation of all voters,
all political parties". This included the opposition National League for Democracy
(NLD), which won the 1990 poll in a landslide, a result the regime ignored and recently
annulled. Earlier, on Thursday U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed frustration
at slow progress toward democracy in Myanmar.