GENEVA (AFP) – Rights violations by Myanmar's junta has caused more damage than Cyclone Nargis, a Philippines senator and top member of the world's leading body of parliamentarians said on Thursday.
"In the year 2008 Myanmar was hit by a terrible catastrophe, by typhoon Nargis, and because there was so much devastation people thought that was the worst thing that could happen to Myanmar," said Aquilino Pimentel, president of the Inter Parliamentary Union's (IPU) human rights committee.
"But actually... not. It was rather the deprivation of the rights of the people by a ruling junta," he added.
More than 138,000 people died when cyclone Nargis devastated Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta in May 2008. The cost of repairing the damage was estimated at over four billion dollars.
Pimentel and the committee called for pro-democracy icon Aug San Suu Kyi and 13 opposition parliamentarians elected in 1990 to be freed, underlining they had been detained without trial while some were subjected to "severe torture."
"Nothing much seems to be happening in terms of advancing the cause of democracy in Myanmar," he told journalists.
The committee's resolution called on Myanmar's powerful neighbours India and China, and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), to back moves to urgently free the 13.
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