US Congress extends trade sanctions on Myanmar

Washington, July 25: The US Senate voted 93-1 to extend sanctions on military-ruled Myanmar for an additional year, sending the bill to President George W Bush who is expected to sign it.

Myanmar, which the United States calls by its traditional name Burma, has been scorned in the West for years for its poor human rights record and the continued house arrest of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The House of Representatives voted on Monday to renew US sanctions, which include a ban on imports.

Earlier yesterday, the lawyer for six human rights activists who attended a US Embassy May Day talk in Yangon said Myanmar's military junta had put them on trial for sedition, which is punishable by life imprisonment.

The men, who are all in their late twenties and early thirties, are being tried at a closed military court inside Yangon's notorious Insein Prison, lawyer Aung Thein told the sources in Yangon on Tuesday.

Myanmar exported about 275.7 million dollars worth of clothing, seafood and other goods to the United States in 2003 before the US import ban was first imposed.

''Today, four years later, the situation in Burma remains grave.

Suu Kyi continues to be a virtual prisoner in her own home. Burma's military junta continues to kill, rape, and dragoon people into forced labor,'' Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, said in a statement.

He urged Myanmar's neighbors in Southeast Asia to step up pressure on the military junta.

''I hope we can see more progress on that front in the year ahead,'' Baucus said.

Reuters>