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US Congress extends trade sanctions on Myanmar
Wed, Jul 25, 2007
Reuters

WASHINGTON, July 24 (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate voted 93-1 on Tuesday 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 U.S. sanctions, which include a ban on imports.

Earlier on Tuesday, the lawyer for six human rights activists who attended a U.S. 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 Reuters in Yangon on Tuesday.

Myanmar exported about $275.7 million worth of clothing, seafood and other goods to the United States in 2003 before the U.S. 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.

 

 
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