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.