By Editorial Board

Los Angeles Times

February 21, 2016

The sight of hundreds of freely elected members of Myanmar's Parliament — former political prisoners among them — at the opening of its legislative session earlier this month was testament to the Southeast Asian country's extraordinary journey from military-run pariah state to would-be democracy. Only five years ago, Myanmar was under the control of a military junta with little respect for elections. But last November, the opposition National League for Democracy Party, led by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, won an astonishing 80% of the contested seats in Parliament.

This transition is far from complete, however, and its most difficult tests lie ahead. Per Myanmar's constitution, the military still controls 25% of the seats in Parliament and three top ministerial posts. The constitution also forbids anyone with a spouse or child of foreign citizenship from becoming president. This stricture was intended to bar Suu Kyi — a former political prisoner whose late husband was a British citizen and whose two sons are as well — from becoming president, even though she has been the face of Myanmar's democracy movement for nearly three decades. Suu Kyi's party certainly has the votes in Parliament to pick the president it wants — except Suu Kyi. A member of Parliament herself, she has made no secret of her desire to be president. In fact, she has indicated that if she isn't chosen, she intends to exert great control over whoever is.

The rule preventing her from running is absurd, and the constitution needs to be amended. But as she and her party negotiate with the military to form a government, they must be careful not to cede even more authority to the military in their eagerness to open the presidency to Suu Kyi. For instance, the military should not be granted more high-level posts, as some analysts have suggested they might be. That's not a compromise, that's a sacrifice of the trust that Myanmar voters put in the pro-democracy party to move the government further away from military control and toward a fully democratically run government.

For now, the Democracy Party must work with the military to ensure that the new president comes to power peacefully. But that should not deter the new government from immediately stopping a variety of ongoing human rights violations in Myanmar. Laws that restrict freedom of association and expression should be repealed. And, above all, the oppression of the 1 million Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar should cease. It would be unconscionable for this new government, with or without Suu Kyi as president, to continue disenfranchising the Rohingya and relegating so many of them to squalid refugee camps.

By The Washington Times

February 8, 2016

The immigrant surge throughout the world is not just south to north. Migrants are surging to Australia, too, and Australia’s highest court has ordered a temporary respite from a migrant threat like that in Europe and North America.

Australia’s high standard of living, freedom from religious persecution and a broad welfare net makes the land down under a target for millions of Asians. Many migrants are legitimate refugees seeking shelter for life and limb, but many others are economic migrants chasing jobs or professional careers.

In a test case involving a Bangladeshi woman, the Australian high court ruled that the strategy of holding migrants in New Guinea and on the equatorial island of Nauru until questions about status satisfies the law. Despite being a verified refugee whose status is sanctioned by the Nauruan government, the woman can be confined to the island’s immigration detention center.

The government in Canberra worries that a surge of migrants from South Asia will grow from the manageable tide of refugees and migrants seeking Australian asylum. With the archipelago of some 20,000 islands, a thousand of them permanently inhabited, on its northern flank, the Australians face the threat of such an invasion. Though Indonesia says it is committed to helping Australia suppress the human traffic, there’s a working network of assistance exploiting Asians on the journey. Australia has had to deal with occasional outbreaks, familiar elsewhere, among recent radical Islamic immigrants.

Instability makes Southeast Asia and South Asia a fertile source of migration. An explosion of ethnic violence between Buddhists and the Rohingya, a Muslim sect in southwestern Burma, has produced a refugee crisis. Many minority groups in Burma, as Myanmar called itself until recently, have long histories of revolt against the independent government of the former British colony. Many Rohingya, who trace their ancestors to the eighth century, are descended from migrants from neighboring Bangladesh. Despite their commitment to pacifism, Buddhists have clashed with Rohingya, violence answering violence, and Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel prize leader of a democratic movement to wrest power from the Burmese military, declines to publicly take sides in the dispute.

The Pakistani woman, who had been taken to Australia for medical treatment, does not have the full protection of Australian law and the case could have immediate ramifications for 80 children being detained in refugee camps, including a five-year-old boy who was sexually assaulted on Nauru. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton promises to take a “compassionate” approach, but he says that “the last thing I want is for boats to start again and, as we’re seeing in Europe at the moment. There are thousands of people who are willing to pay people smugglers to get onto boats to come to countries like Australia. We’ve been able to stamp out that trade, and I don’t want it to start again. I don’t want our detention centers to fill up again.”

The Australian court’s ruling runs contradictory to rulings in American courts, which have consistently said that Constitutional guarantees of personal liberty afforded to American citizens extend to foreigners who make it to American soil. But the law, and not the scimitar, will sort it out.

By Business Recorder Editorial

February 5, 2016

At long last conceding electoral victory to Aung San Suu Kyi the military regime has handed over government to people's elected representatives who were sworn in as members of Myanmar's bicameral parliament. Some 600 members, including about a hundred former political prisoners, took oath of office on Monday amidst an air of hope and despair - hope that they would introduce institutional reforms to strengthen democracy and despair that they won't be able to elect Suu Kyi as president of the country. Under a Suu Kyi specific constitutional mandate anyone having foreign husband and/or children cannot be elected president of Myanmar. Reports that she was in touch with military to remove this ban have been quashed, proving right her premonition and hence her oft-quoted decision to govern from behind the scene. And that she will, given it is she who won her National League for Democracy 80 percent of the contested seats, with overwhelming support of Myanmar's ethnic minorities who constitute 40 percent of country's 51 million populations. The sitting president, Thein Sein, a general-turned-politician, will step down in March and NLD nominee will take over. But, as Washington said in its congratulatory message, 'impediments remain to realisation of a full democratic and civilian government'. The military will not only retain 25 percent of seats in the newly-elected parliament - just as ex-president Suharto had Golkar party in the Indonesian parliament - but also some key ministries. But expectation is that finding itself increasingly a pariah in the emerging democratic ambience world over the military rulers would like to keep a low profile, just as they have over the last few years. 

Be it in Africa or Latin America, and now in Myanmar, the young, nascent democracies' inheritance from the monolithic dictatorial regimes is invariably a bitter harvest of outstanding problems and 'swept under the carpet' unresolved issues and disputes. Of course, they inherit strong centres, concentrated powers tucked away and insulated from mainstream at places like Naypyidaw, as they often are, but nothing concrete in terms of institutions and systems. So will be the case for Suu Kyi. Her most formidable challenge is going to be picking up a president, who should not only remain loyal but also act as a puppet, which is a risky proposition given enormous powers that rest in the office of president of Myanmar. She would be also obliged to keep the military in good humour. Under the constitution, three key ministries - home affairs, defence and border affairs - remain under the control of the army chief. Home affairs include administration and border affairs deals with minorities' heartlands - both without which the elected government would not be able to introduce institutional reforms and bring ethnic minorities to beat their swords into ploughshares by joining the national mainstream. 

The Rohingya Muslims did not vote for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy candidates - because they had no votes. Thanks to her predecessors' apathy who didn't want to run afoul of ethnic Rakhine Buddhists majority and had declared the Rohingyas illegal immigrants and deprived them of their basic human and political rights. The world expects of the Nobel laureate to restore Rohingyas' citizenship and offer them equal opportunity even if it enrages the Rakhine Buddhists. Rohingyas have been citizens, even rulers, of Myanmar, formerly Burma, for centuries. Currently thousands of Rohingya Muslims are trapped in kind of concentration camps. Who should know their pain better than Suu Kyi who spent 15 years in house arrest.

Myanmar has recently been in the news because of its repression of ethnic minorities, especially the Rohingya Muslims. Despite the fact that the country has been in the midst of a civilian transition since 2011 after decades of military rule, the control of the military on matters official and unofficial remains strong. In this context, the dramatic and almost total victory of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, has come as a shock more than a surprise. Not only has the NLD managed to win a majority of the contested seats, it may have managed to have secured an absolute majority in the country where 25 percent of all seats in parliament are still allotted to the army. The country still has a commander-in-chief and a strong president who are unlikely to cede control easily. This is why the results of the November 8 election, as welcome as they may seem, present a challenge unlike any other Suu Kyi has faced. Governing the country while bearing the opposition of the country’s strong military junta will be a difficult task.

This is why Suu Kyi’s first message has been to the commander-in-chief, president and speaker to meet and discuss ‘national reconciliation.’ The subtext is that Suu Kyi knows that she will have to govern with the support of the army despite having insisted last week that she would be ‘above the president’ if the NLD was able to win power. Most international observers are holding off on celebrations; months of political negotiations are now expected on how power will be shared with the country’s military elite. The NLD’s victory creates another concern. Its victory has rooted out smaller ethnic-based political parties which represented the country’s 40 percent ethnic minority populations. Given Suu Kyi’s long silence over the oppression of the Rohingya Muslims, concerns over whether the diversity of Myanmar will be represented in government are real. Recognising this, Suu Kyi had earlier spoken of the need for a government that reconciles all groups, but her stunning victory in the elections might change her stance to the worse. With polling monitors reporting a ‘well-run’ polling process, perhaps change is coming to Myanmar. But while the Myanmar establishment will have been shaken by the poll results, the commander-in-chief retains key powers including appointing the heads of the interior, defence and border security ministries. The election has been a great victory for the decades-old democracy movement in the country. It is easy to forget that Suu Kyi won her Nobel Prize in 1991. It is also easy to forget that hundreds of thousands of people in Myanmar, including the Rohingya, were denied the right to vote in this election. These are the contradictions that Myanmar’s democracy will have to take on directly.

By Editorial of Carbonated.tv

November 11, 2015

Aung San Suu Kyi may be a democratic hero but let’s not forget that Myanmar’s so-called "Nelson Mandela" is still silent on one of today’s gravest humanitarian crises.

Myanmar is euphoric — and rightly so.

For the first time in almost 25 years, the country held “largely free” democratic elections. The nation’s human rights champion Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party National League for Democracy has, according to unofficial results, won a parliamentary majority, which essentially means a civilian government will lead after 50 years of military rule.

Suu Kyi’s victory has indeed been historic. However, will her leadership be equally remarkable?

The answer to the question is a little complicated.

While her contributions to human rights in her country cannot be written off, the fact that she consistently turnd a blind eye to the calculated exclusion and persecution of Muslims, especially the genocide of the Rohingya community, is inexcusable.

Nearly 1.3 million Rohingya, a Muslim minority, live in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. They are officially stateless. The government regards them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and denies them citizenship. On the other hand Bangladesh has refused to grant Rohingyas refugee status since 1992.

However, the situation for the community deteriorated in 2012 when the “969 Movement” was initiated by "Buddhist Bin Laden" Ashin Wirathu. Apart from instigating violence, Wirathu and his followers endorsed and proposed several legislative measures and policies against the Rohingya.

Since then, the genocidal campaign caused hundreds of deaths and displaced more than 140,000 Muslims in almost three years.

One might argue, given the influence of Myanmar’s military on the political affairs of the country, there wasn’t much Suu Kyi could do for the Rohingya people as they were mercilessly slaughtered and driven away from their homes to the sea by extremist Buddhist monks.

But why did it stop her from even condemning the persecution in words? Why didn’t she use her Nobel Peace Prize to address the issue?

The answer to this question is not really complicated.

Speaking up for the rights of Rohingya is not in NLD’s electoral interests primarily because it could cost them millions of votes.

Even as people around the world condemned the oppression of Rohingya following the eruption of “migrant boat crisis” in Southeast Asian waters, Suu Kyi refrained from mentioning the name Rohingya in her speeches.

She even sidelined Muslims during her election campaign — not a single one of the NLD's parliamentary candidates was Muslim.

Myanmar may have held its first democratic election in more than two decades, but it cannot be a true democracy unless and until NLD, under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi, recognizes and addresses the plight of Rohingya and other ethnic minorities in the country.

By Bangkok Post Editorial

October 19, 2015

The monsoon season is ending in western Myanmar and the Bay of Bengal, and that foreshadows a problem. Reports from Bangladesh and Rakhine state of Myanmar are already serving up a warning: traffickers and their prospective Rohingya clients are gearing up to board boats and strike out again for Southeast Asia. A new wave of migrants appears certain.

Neither Thailand nor its affected neighbours appear prepared. Since it is unlikely the human traffickers or the desperate Rohingya will call off their plans, it is past time for the government and other countries to prepare.

Some of their planning will, by necessity, have to be kept secret; governments must not create conditions to attract illegal migrants. Almost all of last year's tragedies and troubles can be prevented, but if nothing changes, then nightmares will repeat.

One must put the blame for this state of affairs where it belongs. The authorities in Myanmar, up to and including President Thein Sein, have not been helpful in stemming the mass migration of the Royingha. Nay Pyi Taw, against all international law and practice, insists that Rohingya who have lived for generations in Rakhine state are not citizens. This basic error has led to the marginalisation of the Rohingya people, their exclusion from almost all opportunity and their descent into poverty, creating the desire to go somewhere, anywhere, to improve their lot in life.

Neither fellow Asean members, including Thailand, nor the world community has effectively called Myanmar to account for this reprehensible, but repairable, problem. Because of Nay Pyi Taw's refusal to legally recognise the Rohingya, it is impossible to ensure the safe repatriation of the Rohingya migrants to the homes they have just fled. As such we have an unbreakable cycle of migration and forced acceptance of camps by Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Amnesty International called last year's migration crisis a "hellish reality". Early indications at this time are that this has not deterred the traffickers. Nor, according to witnesses, has it dissuaded the Rohingya, who remain desperate enough to put their lives on the line in rickety boats to try to find safe harbour in another country.

Vivian Tan, the main spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said last week the number of Rohingya migrants tripled from 2011 to 63,000 last year. "That trend is likely to continue," she told The Guardian newspaper. The only hope to stem that flow is to address the root causes, that is convince Nay Pyi Taw to change its policies. There seems little chance of that. For one thing, the country is deeply invested in a November election.

Most Rohingya migrants do not wish to stay in Thailand, but the human trafficking routes pass through this country. Last year, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha ordered steps to combat the trafficking. That could "reward" Thailand with a promotion on the US Trafficking in Persons list. Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai this past week met and spoke to the senior US analyst working on that list, Kari Johnstone.

There can be little doubt that there are still plenty of human traffickers willing to exploit the Rohingya and Thai hospitality. Last year's crackdown can only mean the traffickers will become warier. The discovery of jungle "killing fields" where migrants were held as hostages means more forceful action against illegal migration must be taken. To "be prepared", like the Boy Scouts motto, means the government adopting measures now, not tomorrow.

By Saudi Gazette

October 19, 2015

“The road to future peace in Myanmar is now open,” said President Thein Sein after his government signed a ceasefire agreement with eight armed ethnic groups on Thursday. The president seems to be unaware of the many hurdles on the path to peace. For one thing, seven of the 15 armed groups declined to sign the agreement. Though the Karen National Union (KNU) that has been at war with the Myanmar military for nearly 70 years is a party to the deal, the United Wa State Army, believed to be the largest and best equipped of the country’s armed ethnic groups, is not. Based in the Shan State, the Wa State Army receives large quantities of military hardware from China.

The Kachin Independence Organization, which controls vast areas of Kachin State in Myanmar’s northeast has also not joined the peace process. Thein Sein, who made the nationwide ceasefire a key platform for his reformist agenda after taking power in 2011, wanted the deal to be signed ahead of the Nov. 8 general elections. The government has removed all the groups that signed the ceasefire agreement from its list of Unlawful Associations. This is expected to help them join the political mainstream.

Thursday’s agreement was the culmination of more than two years of negotiations with both the government and the rebel groups coming under growing pressure from the West to end what a US State Department spokesman described as “the longest-running civil conflict in the world.”

Apart from US, institutions from the European Union to Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and Japan were involved in the government-led peace agenda. Beijing has long expressed a desire to see peace restored in Kachin State, where it has massive investments in the local jade trade, mineral exploration and hydroelectric power.

Although the West and China exercise considerable influence over Myanmar’s peace process, the latter is worried that the West, and particularly the United States, is extending its presence in Myanmar right into China’s backyard. US Ambassador Derek Mitchell has visited war-torn Kachin State twice in just one year. This may be the reason why China put pressure on the United Wa State Army and the Kachin Independence Organization that operate on the Myanmar-China border, not to sign the agreement. This together with the fact that opposition figures such as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and several key leaders and civil society groups have kept aloof from the peace process argues against pinning too many hopes on the ceasefire agreement restoring peace and stability in Myanmar’s ethnic regions.

Then there is the still unresolved issue of Rohingyas. Though US President Barack Obama pushed Myanmar to conclude the ceasefire as part of wider changes to protect minorities, Rohingya Muslims are the one minority who needs protection most and who stand to gain the least from the recent reforms in that country. Even the November elections will not bring any succor to them. The government has disenfranchised almost all of Myanmar’s approximately one million Rohingyas because of heavy pressure from nationalist politicians and Buddhist monks who regard them as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh though their ancestors have been living in this Buddhist country since the seventh century. Worse still, almost all political parties are resorting to anti-Rohingya rhetoric to raise suspicions and create fears about this helpless minority in the minds of the majority Buddhists. Even the NLD led by Nobel Peace laureate Suu Kyi appears to have succumbed to pressure from radical Buddhist monks and is fielding no Muslim candidates in the elections.

This means the West should not view Thursday ceasefire agreement as the end of the reform process, but as a modest beginning. More important, they must ensure that the options before Rohingyas are not “to stay and die or to leave by boat,” as Yanghee Lee, UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, pointed out in one of her reports.

By Editors

Carbonated.tv

September 9, 2015

Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese Nobel Laureate who spent 15 years under house arrest for supporting democracy, has no Muslim candidates for November elections.

The November polls in Myanmar will be the first general election since a civilian government was introduced in 2011.

And while it may be an historic or landmark election, as most news reports are putting it, it’s definitely not a democratic because candidates belonging to the second-largest religious population in the country – Myanmar is a Buddhist majority – are being sidelined.

Among some 6,200 candidates running for office for 92 parties in Myanmar, not one candidate from the Muslim community has been selected by party chiefs.

But even more alarming is the fact that not even Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese Nobel Peace Prize winner who spent 15 years under house arrest for her pro-democracy activism, has chosen a single Muslim among 1,151 candidates of her political party, National League for Democracy.

The NLD hasn't offered any reason for the exclusion of Muslim candidates or whether it's intentional. However, it’s believed the move is part of the rampant anti-Muslim sentiment in the Southeast Asian nation.

Although no proper government stats are available to confirm this fact, Islam is generally considered the second largest religion in Myanmar.

But Burmese Muslims, who unlike Rohingya are not considered stateless and have been living in the country for generations, have long complained of facing discrimination by the Buddhist majority.

It’s believed the anti-Islam hate-mongering perpetrated by Burmese "Buddhist Bin Laden" Ashin Wirathu and his supporters has not only affected the status of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar but also created problems for Muslims in general.

And the situation has only deteriorated because of the criminal indifference shown toward the issue by President Thein Sein, who allegedly doesn’t want to upset hardline Buddhists.

But even worse is the deafening silence from Suu Kyi. Despite being known and awarded for her advocacy of human rights, she has been criminally silent over the genocidal campaign against the Rohingya community that has caused hundreds of deaths and displaced more than 140,000 members in almost three years.

Her deliberate attempts to ignore the issue have led many to believe that Suu Kyi is also trying to appease hardline Buddhists. And now, her failure to choose a single Muslim candidate is cementing those rumors.

It might be a historic victory on NLD’s part to finally be able to participate in November’s election. The exclusion of Muslim contenders, however, is certainly not democratic.

But does Suu Kyi care? Only time will tell.

By The Nation Editorial

September 8, 2015

Denying Muslim Rohingya the right to political representation will only pour more fuel on sectarian disputes

Recent developments in Myanmar threaten to turn the country's first free election into a setback for democracy and reconciliation rather than a milestone.

Ethno-religious conflicts that have raged for decades are still far from settled, and more fuel is being poured on the flames in the run-up to November's poll. Probably worst-affected are the Muslim Rohingya minority in the eastern border state of Rakhine, most of whom are still not recognised as Myanmar citizens.

Last week a Rohingya member of parliament, Shwe Maung, was barred from contesting November's election on the basis that his parents were not Myanmar citizens at the time of his birth. His appeal to the state election commission "was thrown out in less than 10 seconds", he says. The commissioners had refused even to look at documentary proof he provided of his parents' citizenship.

Myanmar's election commission revealed that it has rejected at least 88 candidates for failing to meet the citizenship requirement. Eighteen of those were Muslim, according to local media reports.

It is understandable that Myanmar, with its many diverse ethnic groups and often-porous borders, feels it necessary to scrutinise the nationality of political candidates. But, by its treatment of Shwe Maung, the election commission has shown that the scrutiny is biased and unjust.

And that prejudice extends to the way state and national authorities treat members of minorities. 

Muslim Rohingya have been excluded at every stage of modern Myanmar's development as a nation-state. Despite having lived in Rakhine in significant numbers for generations, they remain stateless and without the basic rights and services that citizenship confers.

Although their origins are still a matter of debate, their longstanding residence in eastern Myanmar is no longer in question and dates back beyond independence from British rule in 1948.

Yet both the state authorities and the national leadership in this predominantly Buddhist nation continue to bar Muslims from social and political participation. 

The picture is no brighter for the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Aung San Suu Kyi, which is not fielding a single Muslim candidate in the upcoming election. Favourite to win the majority of seats, the NLD has paid little attention to communal conflict in the run-up to the poll. Its policy on the issue is almost the same as that of the military-backed USDP. Suu Kyi appears loath to express empathy, let alone sympathy, for the Muslim minorities targeted by Buddhist mobs during sectarian bouts of violence.

Meanwhile religious and nationalist extremists have played a crucial role in fanning anti-Muslim sentiment over the past few years. Figures such as the firebrand monk Wirathu have used racist rhetoric to marginalise Myanmar's Muslims, who account for just 5 per cent of the 51-million-strong population.

In a recent interview with AFP, Wirathu claimed "victory" for his campaign to pressure the government to push controversial laws through parliament that helped snatch away voting rights from hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya in strife-torn Rakhine.

The Myanmar authorities claim to be moving towards democracy and reconciliation, but no progress can be made unless they review the citizenship policy. The road to democracy and reconciliation can only be travelled with the participation of all. A nationalist ethos of Burmese Buddhism is a dangerous diversion that will end in more violence.

By Los Angeles Times Editorial

September 3, 2015

When the United States reestablished full diplomatic relations with Myanmar in 2012, the Obama administration was optimistic that the once-isolated Southeast Asian country, also known as Burma, was moving steadily along a path toward democracy. The ruling junta had recently turned over much of its power to a quasi-civilian government and had released 1,300 political prisoners. Nobel Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi had been released from house arrest and was soon elected to parliament.

But after three years and two visits from President Obama, Myanmar's progress has stalled. It continues to oppress its stateless Rohingya Muslim population, which has been designated one of the world's most persecuted minorities. The government has also stepped up arrests of political dissidents and journalists. Attempts to reform the constitution, under which the military is automatically allocated a quarter of the seats in parliament, have been blocked.

And with one of the biggest, most closely watched elections just weeks away — with 498 parliamentary seats at stake — the government has banned candidates from criticizing the military on state-run media.

Of course, these actions have prompted some stern statements from State Department officials, and Obama has called the plight of the Rohingya a "most urgent matter." But overall, the U.S. approach has been to praise Myanmar's leaders for their reform efforts so far and to encourage them to do better. That's not working so well. Human rights groups and other experts are skeptical that the elections will be conducted honestly, even with legions of election monitors expected to be on site. They fear the military will intimidate voters, or the government might cancel the elections outright, in areas where the ruling party is unpopular.

Myanmar is a country of strategic significance to the U.S. because of its location between India and China and its long, close relationship with China and North Korea. Despite this, the U.S. must take a tougher stance. When Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel visits this week, he should start by reminding the country's officials that economic sanctions can always be reimposed. For example, the U.S. could add officials implicated in human rights abuses to the Specially Designated Nationals list, barring them from doing business with or getting funds from anyone in the U.S.

American firms with an investment of more than half a million dollars in Myanmar are required to report back on the work they do there, their anti-corruption practices and what steps they have taken to ensure that human rights and workers' rights are maintained. That requirement is set to expire next May. It should not.

These are small steps, but they might help remind Myanmar that better ties with the U.S. require meaningful reform.