The Burmese government, run by generals who brazenly ignored election results, put the winner under house arrest and plundered their unfortunate land, expects to assume the rotating chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, known as Asean, next year.

Modern history gave the junta members reason to believe that they would assume that seat, just as normal leaders would. It has been a principle of many international bodies that most things countries do inside their borders are internal matters, and many of the other Asean members – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – have serious imperfections.

Yet, thankfully, the neighbors of Burma, renamed Myanmar by its military rulers, have begun to twitch. Singapore’s foreign minister, George Yeo, recently said that “some hard messages may have to be put across” to the Burmese generals. An official in Malaysia told a newspaper that the Burmese leadership “would be unacceptable,” and similar things have been heard in Jakarta and Manila.

Such sentiments are hardly an irresistible wave. But there is no longer a consensus that the Burmese will get the chairmanship. One reason is the tough stance of the Bush administration and the European Union. Some Asean nations also sense that the junta is now a blot on the region. A conference of Asean legislators called for political reform and the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese opposition leader, from house arrest as preconditions for accepting a Burmese Asean chairman.

These stirrings may not sway the Burmese generals and their cronies, who have powerful allies in India and China. But declaring that a gross violator of human rights is unworthy of its chairmanship would be a proud achievement for Asean, and a good message to other international groups that still believe tyranny is an internal matter.