BURMA ISN'T FREE YET

Well-intentioned world leaders are no doubt still patting themselves
on the back for the role they feel their "carrot-and-stick" diplomacy
played in yesterday's release of Aung San Suu Kyi. After 19 months of
house arrest, Ms. Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy activist who won the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, is now free to travel in her home country
of Burma (renamed Myanmar by the thugs who run the place).

But before they uncork the champagne and declare a victory for the
bipolar policy of sanctions-plus-engagement, they should take a good,
hard look at why the generals and drug dealers that comprise Burma's
military regime -- cynically called the State Peace and Development
Council -- gave "the Lady" her freedom.

Sure, the junta knows that once they convince the U.S. State
Department, the European Union, Japan and just about everyone else in
the free world -- excepting the French -- that they're taking "real
and substantive" steps toward democracy, sanctions will be lifted
like so many Kabul burkas and they'll be flush with cash once more.
That explains all the talk, in the state-run media this last week, of
"the total eradication of narcotic drugs " and a commitment to
"allowing all of our citizens to participate freely in the life of
our political process." Note, of course, the avoidance of the magic
word, "democracy."

But the main reason that Ms. Suu Kyi -- the adored and respected
daughter of Burma's independence hero, Gen. Aung San, and leader of
Burma's National League for Democracy -- is free today is that the
generals who run the show are confident that they have effectively
dismantled her organization and crushed the Burmese people's dream of
democracy. Whether or not that confidence is misplaced depends
largely on how the international community reacts to the fact of Ms.
Suu Kyi's ostensible freedom, even as her people remain effectively
enslaved.

The military has ruled Burma since 1962, brutally stamping out
countless anti-government protests. Years of failed socialist
policies and suppression have left the country an economic
basket-case. In 1988, at the height of the protests, more than 3,000
pro-democracy demonstrators from across the country were killed by
government forces. It was the wide-scale protests of 1988, and the
government's bloody clampdown, that catapulted Ms. Suu Kyi to the
leadership of the nation's pro-democracy movement. This culminated in
her landslide win in parliamentary elections in May 1990.

Burma's ruling military junta has done nothing to move the country
toward democracy since declaring those elections invalid. Over the
past 12 years, thousands of members of Ms. Suu Kyi's League have been
imprisoned in a concerted effort to snuff out democracy -- and to
deny her, and her supporters, any political legitimacy. In the late
1990s, in response to Ms. Suu Kyi's demands that parliament finally
be seated, the junta intensified its clampdown, rounding up thousands
more League members in a renewed effort to crush the party once and
for all.

By all accounts, the clampdown has shaken her party, and may even
have damaged its solidarity to an irreparable degree. Ms. Suu Kyi's
offer to end demands that she be present at the negotiating table may
be a sign of growing tensions within the League as it watches its
membership dwindle.

In the past year and a half, more than 250 League members have been
released from prison; on Monday, the government announced the release
of 600 more detainees, 340 of whom are women and children with no
political connections. But so far the junta has ignored requests by
U.N. special envoy Razali Ismail to release the 1,400 remaining
political prisoners that he says the military government is holding.

If sanctions are lifted prematurely, and money begins to pour in
before political prisoners are released, restrictions on free
assembly and political activity are lifted, and the groundwork for a
constitution is laid, the junta will see little reason to carry out
further reforms. Indeed, instead of celebrating the release of Ms.
Suu Kyi, Washington should seize this opportunity to wave another
stick in the direction of Rangoon. Like all dictators, the generals
are motivated by self-preservation alone. Fear of social unrest
(compounded by a growing AIDS epidemic) is perhaps the biggest
motivator for what appears to be a more liberal stance by the junta.

The U.S. banned new investment in Burma in 1997. Since that time,
however, U.S. textile imports from Burma have increased by nearly
400%. As a result, Senators Tom Harkin and Jesse Helms -- not exactly
ideological twins -- have teamed up to introduce legislation banning
textile and apparel imports from Burma, which Mr. Harkin says put
over $400 million last year "straight into the coffers of Burma's
brutal military regime." Now is the time to intensify threats of such
a ban. Unless there's real reform in Burma, the junta must remain
pariahs in our eyes.

Mr. Judge is an editorial features editor at the Journal.