US lashes 'brutal' Myanmar rights record
In an annual global report on human rights, the State Department said Myanmar's ruling junta carried out numerous extrajudicial killings along with rape and torture without punishing anyone responsible.
"The regime brutally suppressed dissent," it said, faulting the junta for "denying citizens the right to change their government and committing other severe human rights abuses."
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, crushed a 2007 uprising led by Buddhist monks, killing at least 31 people, according to the UN. In May last year, a cyclone left 138,000 people dead or missing.
"The regime showed contempt for the welfare of its own citizens when it persisted in conducting a fraudulent referendum in the immediate aftermath" of the cyclone, the State Department said.
It said that Myanmar also "delayed international assistance that could have saved many lives."
The regime forcibly relocated people away from their homes, particularly in areas dominated by ethnic minorities, with troops then confiscating their property or looting their possessions, the report said.
"Thousands of civilians were displaced from their traditional villages -- which often were then burned to the ground -- and moved into settlements tightly controlled by government troops in strategic areas," the report said.
"In other cases villagers driven from their homes fled into the forest, frequently in heavily mined areas, without adequate food, security or basic medical care," it said.
The State Department also said that women and members of certain minority groups are completely absent in the government and the judiciary.
Myanmar's most famous woman, pro-democracy advocate and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has been under house arrest for most of the last 19 years.
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US urges ASEAN to push for political progress in Myanmar
Scot Marciel, the US ambassador to the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) told reporters his country wanted the group's members to "use whatever contacts and access they have in the country to encourage new thinking and reform and increase openness and political progress".
The diplomat, speaking after an official visit to Hanoi, said he would go to Thailand for the opening of the ASEAN summit starting on Friday.
But he refused to elaborate on a policy review towards Myanmar US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had announced earlier.
Marciel told reporters Clinton said "that our approach to date, emphasising sanctions, hadn't worked".
"She also emphasised that the ASEAN approach of engagement hadn't worked," he said.
"So she said, given that we haven't achieved that success, it's logical and appropriate to review and look for new ideas to see if there is a way we can be more effective."
A day after Obama took office a senior official in Yangon said Myanmar hoped the new president would change Washington's tough policy towards its military regime and end the "misunderstandings" of the past.
Former US President George W. Bush's administration strengthened decade-old sanctions against Myanmar while his wife Laura was an outspoken critic of the country's ruling junta.
"Our goal vis-a-vis Myanmar or Burma remains to encourage release of political prisoners, dialogue between the government and the people in the opposition and overall progress so that the country stops going in a negative direction and moves in a more positive direction", Marciel added.
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