Among those being targeted is the party of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the National League for Democracy (NLD). And the junta is doing so by turning to a word that has gained new meaning in the post-Sep.11, 2001 world—’terrorism’. The government has enough evidence to declare the NLD as an unlawful association for its links with terrorist groups,’’ Brig. Gen. Kywa Hsan, the junta’s information minister, told reporters in Burma this week.

Those words come in the wake of Rangoon naming four groups as having committed ’’terrorist’’ acts in the capital. The four, which are in exile, are the National Coalition Government for the Union of Burma (NCGUB), the Federation of Trade Union for Burma (FTUB), the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front (ABSDF) and the National League for Democracy - Liberated Area (NLD-LA).

The threat by the junta, which could force the NLD to dissolve due to laws such as the Illegal Association Act, has triggered widespread concern among Burmese political exiles, since they, like the other actors in the international community, are aware of how pivotal a player the NLD is to help Burma shed its tag of being a military dictatorship and become a member of the world’s democracies.

The latest moves

That stems from the NLD having won 392 seats of Burma’s 485-member parliament at a general election in May 1990, which the junta has refused to recognise. Rangoon’s generals, who were humiliated by the people’s verdict on the only election in decades, cracked down on the government that emerged from it, the NCGUB, forcing it into exile.

The latest moves by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the junta is officially known, come on top of its attempts to silence Suu Kyi, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, by keeping her under house arrest, the current phase of which began in May 2003. She has spent the last 10 of her 17 years as a prisoner of the junta.

And a regime that has gained notoriety for terrorising its people for decades through its harsh grip on power is still to offer a plausible reason — other than accusing the NLD and other exiled groups — about who was actually behind the five bomb blasts that rocked Rangoon’s business district over a week ago. The Burmese capital also witnessed three bomb blasts in May last year, which killed 20 people and injured scores, unlike the recent explosions, which left no casualties.

" We are concerned with these developments, because this is a threat by the military regime to do something severe against the NLD, to dissolve it," Zaw Min, head of the foreign affairs committee of the Democratic Party for a New Society, a Burmese political group in exile, told IPS.

’’They are shutting the door to political reform. The SPDC clearly does not want any reconciliation,’’ added Zin Linn, a spokesman for the NCGUB, during an interview.

The political reform process in Burma has followed two tracks, both of which have ended in futility. One got underway in October 2000 when the United Nations appointed a former Malaysian diplomat, Razali Ismail, to be a special envoy to broker talks between the SPDC and the NLD leadership, aimed to move the country down the road towards a democracy. But the SPDC banned Razali from entering the country in March 2004, forcing him to quit his assignment months later.

NLD led opposition

The other was the junta’s effort to draft a new constitution for the country as part of a seven-point road map to establish a democracy. But the NLD led opposition groups in a boycott of this constitutional drafting exercise, given the restrictive measures imposed on this political exercise — including a threat of being thrown into jail for those who opposed the SPDC’s idea of governance and power sharing.

In March, the junta revealed its lack of interest in reform by booting out a Swiss conflict-resolution group that had played a major role in trying to bridge the political divide in the country. The same month, it rebuffed attempts by Malaysian Foreign Minister, Syed Hamid Albar, to meet Suu Kyi as part of his effort to assess the prospects for democracy in Burma.

The Malaysian minister’s visit was the latest effort by the 10-member Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Burma is a member, to understand a regime that ASEAN has defended in the face of mounting criticism for its growing list of human rights violations. The abuses have included the use of rape as a weapon of war against women from the country’s ethnic minorities, imprisoning over 1,300 political prisoners, forced labour that borders on slavery and having tens of thousands of child soldiers in its ranks.

The members of ASEAN — which include Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam — have come to Burma’s defence, disagreeing with the United States and the European Union, which have led the way in calling for and imposing economic sanctions and travel restrictions on Burma and its leaders.

"The timing and the motive of the SPDC’s plans is revealing,’’ Aung Naing Oo, a Burma analyst living in exile, told IPS. ‘’The SPDC now realises that the geo-political conditions favour it enormously, since they know that ASEAN has no clout and international pressure from the U.S. will not be much stronger."

"The military regime feels that nobody can touch them now and they are forging new links with China, Russia and India,’’ he added. ’’They want to effectively remove the only embarrassment and threat to their rule, the NLD."