Nobel laureates call for arms embargo on Myanmar

Monsters & Critics

February 19, 2008 - New York - A group of nine Nobel Peace Prize winners on Tuesday urged the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Myanmar as a consequence of its military crackdown of Buddhist-led pro-democracy demonstrations last year.

The group said in a statement that the military government has since October, 2007, carried out a 'nationwide dragnet, arresting and torturing thousands of dissidents.'

It appealed to the 15-nation council in New York to 'take action quickly on measures that will prevent the sale of arms to the Burmese military, including a ban on banking transactions targeting top Burmese leaders, as well as state and private entities that support the government's weapons trade.'

The statement was signed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Shirin Ebadi, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Mairead Maguire, Rogoberta Menchu Tum, Elie Wiesel, Betty Williams and Jody Williams.

Myanmar's main opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for fighting for democracy in the early 1990s, has been under house arrest for more than a decade. The UN has been calling the military government to release her and other political prisoners.

Tens of thousands of people in Myanmar, formerly Burma, took to the streets last fall first to protest the high living costs in the impoverished nation. The protests turned to demand democracy and personal freedoms, which were crushed by the government.