Burmese Rally against Thein Sein in Tokyo

By SAW YAN NAING, The Irrawaddy News Magazine, Nov 06, 2009.

About 200 Burmese dissidents demonstrated outside Japan’s Parliament House in Tokyo on Friday, the second of three planned protests against Burma’s military government during a visit by Prime Minster Gen Thein Sein, who arrived in the Japanese capital on Thursday to attend the first Mekong-Japan Summit.

Burmese pro-democracy demonstrators also launched a protest outside the New Otani Hotel, where the Burmese premier is staying during the summit.

Ko Ko Aung, a Burmese dissident living in Tokyo, said that the aim of the protest was to decry the upcoming election in Burma as a government ploy to hold onto power in accordance with the sham 2008 Constitution.

“We want to give a message to the Japanese government that we don’t accept the 2010 election or the junta’s Constitution, so they should not support the Burmese military government,” he said.

Ko Ko Aung called for the Japanese government to investigate the details of the current political situation in Burma. Japan’s support of the Burmese regime will not help the Burmese people, he said.

He said that the demonstrators have also scheduled a protest outside the Burmese embassy in Tokyo, which Thein Sein will visit on Friday evening.

Jeff Kingston, the director of Asian Studies at Temple University Japan Campus, told The Irrawaddy on Friday that Japan wants to step up human security efforts in the region and sees the Mekong-Japan Summit as a vehicle for doing so in a coordinated way.

“Japan will promote human security, natural disaster alleviation, pandemic control and climate initiatives for the nations along the Mekong,” he said. “It is a safe way for limited engagement with Burma that allows the [Japanese] government to plausibly deny re-engaging while at the same time getting some traction in Burma.”

Kingston noted that Japan’s new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, and Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada were both well-informed about and sympathetic to the plight of the Burmese and political prisoners and said the current government has expressed stronger support for human rights than previous administrations.

Burma is a member of the six-country Greater Mekong Subregion-Economic Cooperation Program, along with Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and China.

Japan is traditionally Burma’s largest donor nation.

Japan has invested US $216.76 million in 23 projects since 1988, according to a Xinhua news agency report on Thursday.