The leaders of Thailand, China, India, Russia and Singapore have a great opportunity to set free 50 million people from virtual slavery.

In doing so, they can bring potentially great economic rewards for their own countries.

They must put pressure on the military junta in Burma – the regime’s change of the country’s name to Myanmar has not been approved by any parliamentary resolution – and force them to relinquish power. What has happened and is happening in Burma is a disgrace to humanity. It has gone on for too long.

Sadly, resolutions in the United Nations, open letters from government heads, appeals from Nobel laureates, the cutting off of aid by the World Bank and other donors, sanctions by western countries, and fulminations from the United States have had no effect.

The latest proof of the cruelty that is part of everyday life in Burma is a report from the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Red Cross rarely intervenes to name or shame a government; it prefers quiet diplomacy.

Thus, this open and highly damning condemnation is proof that quiet diplomacy – also the favoured excuse of neighbours in Southeast Asia – has not worked.

The Red Cross has accused the military of inflicting “immense suffering” on ordinary people in Burma. It says the junta’s actions have “helped to create a climate of constant fear among the population and have forced thousands of people to join the ranks of the internally displaced, or to flee abroad”.

This week, the generals thumbed their noses at the world by reopening their tame constitutional convention to adopt a scheme which would ensure their grip on power. Now is a good time for the rest of the world to stop this miserable and misery- creating scam.

The tragedy of modern Burma extends further and deeper than the Red Cross report, which concentrates on very basic rights – or lack of them. Economically, the junta has still greater disasters to its name: it has managed to turn one of the richest regions of the world – blessed with abundant natural gas resources, minerals and excellent agricultural land – not merely into a pariah state, but into an impoverished state.

Burma’s national product last year was US$85.2 billion, or US$1,800 per capita, using purchasing power parity figures, but only US$9.6 billion, or a paltry US$200 a head, if the regime’s official exchange rate is used. A good indicator of how removed the regime is from reality is that it is still using an exchange rate that values the kyat at 16 US cents, whereas the officially tolerated black market values it at about 0.08 US cents.

The country gets by only with a little help from its friends. For ordinary people, this means small-scale smuggling across to Thailand and border trade with China.

For high-ranking figures in the regime, the links are often illegal, damaging to the environment (such as logging and deforestation), dangerous to health (such as drug smuggling), but always immensely lucrative.

When Thandar Shwe, the daughter of junta leader Than Shwe, got married last year, champagne flowed freely and diamonds were the decoration of the day. Wedding gifts were worth US$50 million, or three times the country’s health budget.

The rulers manage to thrive because of links with key business figures in Thailand, and state and commercial ties with China, Singapore, India and Russia, though recent reports say that a deal with Russia to build a nuclear research reactor is in jeopardy because of the stinginess of the junta in paying its share.

It is time for the junta’s major partners to take action. Thailand must get its generals and businessmen to stop the illegal dealings and put pressure on the junta to honour the wishes of their own people.

China is the most interesting case. Although it is a major supplier of consumer and capital goods to the nation, it would do much better if it were trading with a developing, prospering Burma.

A huge market is being suppressed by the stupidity of the junta; it is not in China’s economic interest to prolong this, with the attendant risks of increasing instability along its 2,185km doorstep.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should have a quiet word with his foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, who infamously said that India has no ambition to export ideologies, because the people of each country should decide what type of government they want.

That, surely, is the point: let the people decide – but the people of Burma have no say in the way their country is being miserably governed. Mr Mukherjee may have been misled into thinking that the junta would sell India gas that China covets. Greater experience would have told him that the junta is untrustworthy.

Dr Singh’s own experience of economic development should tell him that India can never be secure with an unstable, impoverished Burma on its already rebellious border, and that India, along with China, would benefit if Burma’s resources were developed for the benefit of all, not plundered exclusively by the corrupt rulers.

Burma is the most straightforward case of consistent abuse of power accompanied by gross mismanagement. The damning Red Cross report should be a signal for action, with China, India and Thailand in the lead, assisted by Russia and Singapore. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, under its new incoming secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan, can help in creating a tempting exit door and supervising fresh elections.

All of the leaders of the aforementioned countries know the case against the Burmese junta is clear cut, and that they are the ones who can put the crucial pressure to exert peaceful regime change.

If they do not, they are being complicit in the stupidity of the junta – which is mismanaging and bringing misery to Burma – and they must also share responsibility for the tragedy exposed in the Red Cross report. Burma is the most straightforward case of consistent abuse of power and gross mismanagement.

Kevin Rafferty is a political commentator