GENEVA - Myanmar, Colombia and Philippines are among the world's most dangerous countries for politicians, a group of leading international parliamentarians said Wednesday.
Myanmar arrested several legislators during the recent crackdown on opposition groups, and continues to imprison others -- including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi -- without fair trial, the human rights committee of the Inter-Parliamentary Union said.
"It is not only Aung San Suu Kyi who is being deprived of her liberty, but several parliamentarians as well as innocent civilians and Buddhist monks,'' Aquilino Pimentel, a Philippines senator and member of the committee, told reporters in Geneva.
Sharon Carstairs, a Canadian senator who heads the committee, said at least 26 legislators were being held by Myanmar's military-led government.
"Some of them have actually served their complete sentences only to then be told that another two years has been added to their sentence without any trial, without any due process,'' Carstairs said.
Delegates at IPU's annual assembly, currently being held in Geneva, will consider an emergency motion on human rights in Myanmar later Wednesday. The organization represents more than 40,000 legislators from 147 national parliaments.
Aside from Myanmar, the rights committee examined 56 cases of alleged abuse in 19 countries.
Carstairs said the body will be highlighting the persecution of legislators in Colombia and the Philippines, but that the situations in Sri Lanka, Ecuador, Eritrea, Lebanon and Zimbabwe were also troubling.
Six years ago, 11 Eritrean parliamentarians were arrested after calling for democratic reforms in the East African country, "and they have literally disappeared off the face of the Earth,'' she said.
