A prominent United States senator has blasted Japan for allegedly funding at least 28 new assistance projects in Burma worth more than $18 million over the past year. “Some of these funds appear to have been provided
directly to the illegitimate and repressive State Peace and Development Council, SPDC,” Sen. Mitch McConnell charged in an October 8 statement published in the Congressional Record.

He was referring to the military regime that governs Burma.. “Why is Japan providing assistance to Burma and the thugs in Rangoon when Burmese democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other members and supporters of the [opposition] National League for Democracy, NLD, remain imprisoned?” the powerful head of the Senate’s Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee asked. “It is time Japan gets with the programme and pressures the SPDC to begin meaningful reconciliation with the NLD–the only legitimately elected leadership of that country,” McConnell warned.

The military nullified a landslide NLD election victory in 1990 and has held Suu Kyi under house arrest for much of the time since. A Japanese government spokesman stresses that all Tokyo’s aid to Burma is humanitarian and “is provided under strict conditions . . . There’s no question of it getting diverted.”