China tells Burmese junta to stop crackdown now

by Shyamal Sarkar, Mizzima News (www.mizzima.com), September 30, 2007

Beijing, China -- A perturbed China, rattled with the escalating violence in Burma, given that it will be hosting the 2008 Olympic games, has asked the Burmese military junta to put an immediate halt to the violent crackdown on demonstrating monks and Burmese people.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, during a telephone conversation with the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Friday said China is concern with situations in Burma and urged all parties concern to show restraint in the face of growing protests.

"China hopes that all parties concerned in Myanmar show restraint, resume stability through peaceful means as soon as possible, promote domestic reconciliation and achieve democracy and development," Wen said, in a statement release by the Chinese ministry of foreign affairs.

China, has been watching the events unfolding in strife torn Burma, and has been hinting that the junta do something about it. The UN special envoy's visit to Burma, where he met with the Burma Army brass with his three-member team in the new jungle capital in Nay Pyi Taw and followed it up with a 90-minute meeting with the Burmese Nobel Peace Laureate in a state guest house in Rangoon, may have spurred the Chinese government to act.

China has been uncomfortable with the situation In Burma ever since the National Convention was heading towards a conclusion. It was apprehensive about the restlessness in the Sino-Burma border, where ethnic ceasefire groups, under mounting pressure from the junta to surrender their arms, started regrouping to take on the Burma Army raising fears of a fresh civil war which could seriously jeopardize China hosting the 2008 Olympic Games.
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