U.N. rights expert calls Myanmar vote plan "surreal"

By David Brunnstrom

April 14, 2008 - BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A United Nations investigator dismissed Myanmar's plans for a May 10 constitutional referendum as "surreal" on Monday and said he saw no credible moves towards political transition in the military-ruled country.

"The government continues detaining people and repressing people who are trying to do some campaigning for a 'no' in the referendum," Paulo Sergio Pinheiro said in an interview.

Myanmar's main opposition party last week urged that there be international observers of the referendum and said people campaigning against a new, military-backed charter were being assaulted and their materials seized.

"How can you have a referendum when you make repression against those that are intending to say 'no'? This is completely surreal," Pinheiro, the U.N. special rapporteur on Myanmar, told Reuters.

Speaking in Brussels, Pinheiro said Myanmar had seen none of the liberalization of political transitions in Asia, Latin America, Eastern or Southern Europe.

"I don't see the most basic requirements," he said.

"If you say a real political transition process is taking place in Myanmar, this would be almost offensive to countries in Asia like the Philippines and Indonesia or Thailand that passed through a transition process to democracy."

Pinheiro, a Brazilian law professor who has held his independent post since 2000, will hand over to Argentine lawyer Tomas Ojea Quintana at the end of the month.

"GLOOMY"

He said there had been some progress in his time in gaining access for aid agencies, but his parting assessment would be "gloomy": "You don't have freedom of association, freedom of expression, freedom of organization, or functioning of parties."

"You cannot have a political transition if you keep almost 2,000 political prisoners and you continue the crackdown after the repression of the end of last year," he said.

Pinheiro said he had not been allowed a visa to return to Myanmar since a November visit and no response to requests for information on the whereabouts of 700 people missing since a crackdown on monk-led anti-government protests in September.

He estimated the number of people killed in that crackdown at least 31, against an official figure of 15.

The junta, which tightly controls Myanmar's media, has urged the country's 53 million people to back the charter, a key step in the military's seven-point "road map to democracy" meant to culminate in multiparty elections in 2010.

Pinheiro said the constitutional process could not be considered democratic given that all delegates of the constitutional assembly had been picked by the government.

He termed "a great mistake" provisions in the document excluding figures like detained Nobel Prize-winning opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from the political process and retaining 25 percent of parliamentary seats for the military.

The charter, dismissed by Western critics as a ploy to entrench 46 years of army rule, also gives the commander in chief the right to suspend the constitution at will.

"I don't think the population knows what it will mean to vote 'yes' or 'no'," Pinheiro said, adding it would be a "very bad sign" if the junta did not accept international observers.

"I will end my mandate saying that this is not a democratic political transition," he said.

(Editing by Charles Dick)