BANGKOK — A UN human rights envoy will visit Myanmar next week, days after the regime jailed an American rights activist as it cracks down on dissent ahead of polls this year.
Tomas Ojea Quintana will start his five day trip on February 15 and expects to meet with Myanmar foreign minister Nyan Win but not with junta head Senior General Than Shwe.
"It's his regular programme, he's supposed to visit the country two times a year," UN human rights officer in Bangkok Hannah Wu told AFP on Thursday.
A Myanmar official confirmed the visit and said Quintana would visit Sittwe in Western Rakhine state, close to the country's border with Bangladesh.
It will be the envoy's third visit to the country after a previous mission last year was postponed.
"(Quintana) was supposed to come since November and the visit was constantly postponed. It will be interesting to see who he can meet," said a Western diplomat on condition of anonymity.
The diplomat said all UN officials, including secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon, had been subject to strict controls during their visits to Myanmar, in contrast to that of United States assistant secretary of state Kurt Campbell last year.
Campbell was allowed rare freedom to meet with opposition figures including democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains under house arrest, as the Obama administration launched a dialogue with the junta.
But on Wednesday the US government criticised the military-ruled nation for sentencing US citizen Kyaw Zaw Lwin to three years in prison on fraud and forgery charges.
"The United States is deeply concerned by the Burmese authorities' decision today to convict US citizen Kyaw Zaw Lwin on politically motivated charges," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said in a statement.
"We consider these actions unjustified. We continue to urge the Burmese regime to release him and allow him to return home to the United States," Crowley said, using the former name of the Southeast Asian nation.
The verdict came as the military government plans to hold polls in late 2010, though no date has yet been set.
Democracy advocates and Western governments fear that the elections will lack credibility as Suu Kyi has been imprisoned for most of the last two decades and the courts continue to lock up dissidents.
More than 2,100 political prisoners remain behind bars in Myanmar, according to the UN.
As well as suppressing the pro-democracy movement, the military is accused of widespread abuses against ethnic minorities living in areas along its remote borders, including displacement, rape and forced labour.
Myanmar's opposition party, the National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won 1990 elections by a landslide but was never allowed to take office.
Quintana was appointed to his human rights role in May 2008 in the wake of a cyclone that left an estimated 138,000 people dead.
When Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar, the UN and rights groups accused the regime of putting people at risk of starvation, disease and death by initially denying foreign aid workers access to the hard-hit southern delta.
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