Over 250,000 signatures secured for Burma’s political prisoners “We must show them they have not been forgotten,” says Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
A global petition campaign for Burma’s political prisoners has secured over a quarter of a million signatures. Campaign activities are taking place across five continents in 32 countries around the world, from the Czech Republic to South Africa. The campaign – which launched on 13 March Burma’s Human Rights Day – aims to collect 888,888 petition signatures before 24 May 2009, the legal date that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi should be released from house arrest.
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams today called for increased support for the global campaign to free all of Burma’s political prisoners, including fellow Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. She is the only Nobel Peace Laureate currently imprisoned, and has been under house arrest for 13 of the past 19 years.
Williams won the Peace Prize in 1997 for her work to secure an international treaty to ban antipersonnel landmines. Speaking on behalf of the Nobel Women’s Initiative, founded in 2006 by six of the seven living women Nobel Peace Laureates, she said, “Many of us struggling for peace around the world can use our freedom to express our views. But the people of Burma risk prison to do this. We need to stand shoulder to shoulder with those democracy activists who have been locked up in the dark. We must show them they have not been forgotten. Please embrace our fellow Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her colleagues as heroes for freedom, peace, and democracy, and sign the petition.”
The petition calls on the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to make it his personal priority to secure the release of all political prisoners in Burma, as the essential first step towards national reconciliation and democratization in the country. The target symbolizes 8.8.88, the day the junta massacred some 3,000 people who courageously protested in Burma’s largest democracy uprising.
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