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Meerut, India — "Total rejection" was the response of Burmese exiles in New Delhi to the roadmap to democracy proposed last week by the military regime in Burma. At a meeting July 18th in New Delhi, representatives of some 2,000 Burmese families living in the city just said "No" to the seven-phase roadmap the regime set forth. The steps begin with a convention that opened the same day in Yangon -- intended to be the final stage in drafting a new Constitution that has been 15 years in the making -- and end, in theory, in free elections at an unspecified future date.

A representative of the exile group said the proposal was another ploy by the junta to maintain military rule in the country. There are 50,000 Burmese families living in India, unwilling to return to their homeland under a regime they consider dictatorial and oppressive.

For years the people of Burma -- renamed Myanmar in 1989 -- have lived under the curse of the military dictatorship. Since that year, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Laureate and the most popular pro-democracy leader of the country, has been placed repeatedly under house arrest and her activities have been restricted. Now 62 years old, she has only one woman attendant with her. There are only two other human beings in the world who see her. One of them is Dr. Tin Myo Win, her physician, who can see her with the permission of the military authorities, and the other is Imbrahim Gambari, the U.N. envoy who saw her twice last year. In all circumstances, even when she is ill, she takes care of herself.

The whole world knows that in 1990 Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, won a landslide victory in general elections in Burma, but the military dictators refused to recognize the people's verdict. They snatched away the civil rights of the people and took control of the media, which they still manipulate.

At the opening session of the national convention on the Constitution, foreign journalists were not allowed to cover the proceedings. Also, the 1,000 government-approved delegates were told that they should not try to amend the document the junta presented for their approval. Included in the document is the provision that the spouse of a foreigner cannot be a Member of Parliament -- which seems to have been written especially for Suu Kyi. Her husband, who died in 1999, was British.

For the leaders of a nation to deprive its people of their democratic rights and deny them the right to build their own future is not acceptable in the modern world. In my opinion, the international community -- especially Burma's neighbors India and China, who since the end of the Cold War have become globally more influential -- have a greater responsibility to put pressure on the junta to respect its people's rights.

Today, not a single country in the world is in a position to function in isolation, no matter how mighty it is. Countries are so interdependent that united action is practically compulsory. In such a world, it is not possible for a country, even one run by an isolationist group of military dictators, to completely ignore international opinion.

Through the United Nations, other countries can put pressure on Burma to behave as a responsible citizen by threatening sanctions. It is high time the international community provided support to the long-suffering people of this isolated nation.

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(Dr. Ravindra Kumar is a renowned Gandhian scholar, India expert and writer. He is the former vice chancellor of CCS University in Meerut, India. He holds a doctorate in political science.)