Petition: Time for U.S. and U.K. To Act

Burma's regime continues to commit crimes against humanity against the people of Burma. The United Kingdom and United States have an unparalleled opportunity to take action, since they will serve as consecutive Presidents of the UN Security Council in August and September, 2009. Click here to learn more about crimes against humanity in Burma.

Subject:

Your Letter:

Dear Ambassador Susan Rice and Ambassador John Sawers,

I am joining this petition since you serve as Presidents of the United Nations Security Council in August and September, 2009, urging you to support Desmond Tutu's call for a UN Security Council Commission of Inquiry and a global arms embargo on Burma.

Desmond Tutu is not the only person to make this call.  55 members of Congress and 60 members of the British parliament have urged the same action.  At the same time, a new report by Harvard Law School, commissioned by five of the world's leading judges, calls for immediate action on crimes against humanity in Burma.  The UN human rights representative to Burma, Paulo Pinheiro, said the same thing in a New York Times op-ed.

The scale and severity of crimes committed by Than Shwe's regime is shocking -- as many villages destroyed as in Darfur, tens of thousands of child soldiers, wide-spread use of modern-day slave labor, and widespread rape of ethnic minority women.  The fact that many countries have turned a blind eye to these abuses recalls the awful days of indifference to similar abuses in Rwanda and Darfur.  Scarcely a country has even mentioned these vast crimes at the U.N. Security Council.

We urge you to seize this moment to immediately propose and build support for a binding U.N. Security Council resolution on these matters.  The longer we wait, the more people will die.

Susan Rice

US Mission to the United Nations
140 East 45th Street
New York, NY 10017
US

John Sawers

UK Mission to the United Nations
One Dag Hammarskjold Plaza
885 Second Avenue
New York, NY 10017
US