Burma

Floor Speech

BURMA -- (Senate - October 01, 2007)

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, for the past week the world watched the people of Burma rise up against the oppressive regime that rules that country.

Then, the tyrannical junta that has held power for some 40 years, the State Peace and Development Council, brought out its soldiers and it brought out its guns. They arrested, brutalized, and killed many who bravely stood up to the misrule of this junta.

So while last week the streets were filled with brave monks adorned in saffron robes demonstrating for freedom, today those same streets are occupied by uniformed thugs and lined with barbed-wire barricades. For now the people of Burma have largely fallen silent. But the silence in Burma is a deafening one that we can still hear. Even if the freedom-loving people of Burma had been temporarily quieted, the rest of us can still lend our voices to their cause.

Earlier today, Senator Kerry and I introduced a sense-of-the-Senate resolution condemning the SPDC for its brutality in snuffing out these cries for freedom. We have already been joined by scores of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and I know we will be joined by many more. The House of Representatives is slated to pass a similar measure later this week. In this way, the entire Congress of the United States will be able to speak, when the Burmese citizen, the Buddhist monk, the democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi herself are forced to be silent.

I urge all of my colleagues to join me and join Senator Kerry on this resolution.

I yield the floor.

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