5 May 2009

The Honorable Hilary Clinton

Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State

Re: U.S. Policy Review on Burma

Madam Secretary,

We are writing on behalf of the All Burma Monks’ Alliance (ABMA) and the 88 Generation
Students, two prominent opposition groups fighting for democracy and human rights in Burma
by peaceful means. The 88 Generation Students group was founded in 2005 by former student
leaders, who spent over a decade in prisons experiencing beatings and torture for their leading
role organizing the nationwide democracy uprising in 1988. The 88 Generation Students led
peaceful protests in August 2007 against the military junta’s sudden increase of fuel prices and
many leaders of it, including Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi, Htay Kywe, Jimmy and Mya Aye, were
rearrested. Following their arrest, hundreds of thousands of Buddhist monks and nuns, led by the
ABMA, held peaceful demonstrations nationwide, calling for the junta to release all political
prisoners and solve the problems through meaningful and time-bound dialogue with democratic
opposition led by Nobel Peace Prize Recipient Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The junta responded
with bloody and violent crackdown and many monks, nuns and lay people were brutally killed
by its soldiers in September 2007, widely known as the Saffron Revolution. Many leading
monks, including Ashin Gambira, were arrested. They have been sentenced to severe
imprisonment and transferred to remote prisons. Solitary confinement and torture are their daily
life.

We are deeply appreciative of the United States’ role under both Democratic and Republican
administrations in supporting our freedom movement. We write this letter to you from a hiding
place that is part of our underground movement. Since our arrest could be imminent, it is critical
that we relay this important message to you.

We fully support the National League for Democracy party and the non-violent struggle for
democracy led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. We join in the demand by the NLD to Burma’s
military junta to release all political prisoners and allow them to participate in the country’s
political process without fear of retribution. As it stands today, the constitution the junta has
written unilaterally and adopted by force and fraud in May 2008 permanently enshrines military
rule and creates the illusion of a democratic process. The planned upcoming “elections” in 2010

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are designed to place a veneer of democratic process over a totalitarian, brutal junta. We can not
agree to participate under such an electoral farce. Doing so would mean that tens of thousands of
Burmese patriots—democracy activists—who have fought for freedom and experienced torture,
oppression and even death would have done so in vain. Their sacrifice to democracy and the
future of our country would be worthless.

We want a Burma that is free, stable and at peace. We welcome an opportunity to engage with
the military regime to review and revise the constitution through a tripartite dialogue taking place
with all stakeholders: the military, the NLD and our ethnic representatives. We strongly believe
that these demands are the solution to move our country on the path of national reconciliation
and democratization peacefully. We appreciate the U.S. Government and Congress for taking
strong economic and diplomatic actions against the Burma’s junta during the past decade. Your
country’s actions represent a moral statement that America will not engage in trade with the
Burma’s junta that will only serve to finance the military’s instruments of oppression. These
measures are also necessary to remind the generals in power that their crimes against humanity
and the brutal and terrible war they wage against their own people are fully noticed and strongly
denounced by the civilized world.

Recently, the junta’s officials have asked the United Nations to try to remove economic
sanctions on Burma. They have blamed the NLD, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and our democracy
movement as instigators for these sanctions. They have been complaining that the U.S. and
Western nations that have imposed sanctions are making the people poor, our country
underdeveloped, and our economy destroyed. Let us be clear—it is the military junta and its
disastrous economic policies, terror, corruption, illegal rule and mismanagement that have turned
one of the richest countries in Asia into one of the least developed in the world.

We understand that you have ordered a review of Burma policy. Here are our recommendations.

(1) We believe that no sanctions should be lifted on the junta until political prisoners have been
released and a meaningful dialogue between the junta, the NLD and representatives of our many
ethnic groups has finalized a new constitution.
(2) We believe that U.S. leadership with strong diplomatic effort to organize other nations,
especially Burma’s neighbors China, India and ASEAN, as well as the EU to work together to
address the situation in Burma with common interest, shared responsibility, unified action, and
clear benchmark will be the best way to make sanctions and engagement effective and produce
positive results.
(3) We support the direct engagement between the U.S. and Burma’s military junta. However,
such direct engagement should reach to the sole decision maker of the junta, Senior General
Than Shwe.
(4) We suggest you should consider additional measures that include the addition of Burmese
crony businessmen and the junta’s political surrogates to visa ban and financial sanctions lists;
and calling for a global arms embargo at the U.N. Security Council; if the junta still refuses to
implement the meaningful change.

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We want to assure you that as you and the civilized world do your part, we do ours. Each of us
has committed our lives to the freedom of our country in the same manner as your Founding
Fathers did when they signed the Declaration of Independence. For us there is not going back
from this freedom road we are traveling. We have confidence knowing that our country will be
free because we have truth on our side where this junta has only brutality, guns, fear and terror to
support it. We know our cause is just and we are joined by millions of our citizens.

One day, our country will be free. When that hour comes and the history of our democracy
movement can be written, it will be with great appreciation how we will tell of the moral and
political support that the American people gave to us during the darkest hours of our struggle.
And that out of your support a new country was born rooted in democratic rights and individual
liberties.

Sincerely yours,

Ashin Aww Bar Sa

All Burma Monks’ Alliance
Rangoon, Burma
abmaburma@gmail.com

Tun Myint Aung

The 88 Generation Students
Rangoon, Burma
88gstudent@gmail.com

Encl:
(1) Open Letter to the SPDC by the 88 Generation Students, No.3/2009 (88), Dated 6 April
2009
(2) Joint Statement on Shwegondaing Meeting’s Resolution, Dated May 1, 2009

Copies Sent to:

The U.S. Senate Women’s Caucus on Burma

The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, U.S. House of Representatives