would the Government consider revisiting the issue of trade sanctions with Burma?
STEPHEN SMITH: Normally when a court is dealing with someone fairly, they listen to a witness before they make a judgment about reliability. That hasn’t occurred in her case today. This court process we fear will be simply a device to see her further incarceration or detention. We have had very robust sanctions against Burma, both in the context of travel and also in the context of financial sanctions. We have deliberately not gone down the road of trade sanctions because we don’t want to do things which will even further adversely impact upon the Burmese people themselves. One of the reasons, for example, we’ve been very generous in our humanitarian assistance post-Cyclone Nargis, again we’re dealing with a difficult regime. The countries which can influence that regime are some of our ASEAN and Asian partners. And that’s why we’ve been very pleased that we’ve seen a very strong response from ASEAN over her detention, echoing Australia’s call, long standing call, for her immediate and
