Brussels, 06/09/2002 (Agence Europe) - A conference on "South East Asia, democracy denied, freedoms massacred: the situation in Burma, Laos and Vietnam" will be held on 16 and 17 September at the European Parliament in Brussels. The aim is to make European leaders more aware of the situation in this region and to reflect on a more coherent approach with European attachment to human rights and to democracy, stress the organisers. The latter are: the Transnational Radical Party, the Lao Movement for Human Rights, Action for Democracy in Vietnam (Qué Me) and the National Council for the Union of Burma, to which the EP Liberal Group has given its support. They say that, despite one notable exception, South East Asia remains one of the regions of the world where there is the least democracy, and where human rights are the most openly and systematically violated. They say they are struck by the casualness if not offhandedness with which the European Union frequents the dictatorial regimes of the region, and maintains if not develops major cooperation programmes with these countries. The Conference will open with the reading of messages of welcome from Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize, and Thich Huyen Quang, Patriarch of the Unified Buddhist Church in Vietnam, in the presence of Laos' Crown Prince Soulivong Savang and MEPs Marco Panella (TRP) and Jules Maaten (Liberal Group). Four panels will deal respectively with the freedom of opinion and religion, economic freedoms (including drugs, corruption, EU cooperation policy misdemeanour), freedom of expression and of the press, human rights and justice (including the situation in prisons, camps, torture, etc.). A fifth panel will examine the role of the neighbouring countries and Union policy, with discussion headed among others by sinologist Marie Holzman, President of Solidarity China, and Sidiki Kaba, President of the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH). Speakers will also include representatives of the Commission, the Council, Member States and the EP as well as exiled government members, journalists, NGO officials, the former director of the Geopolitical Drugs Observatory, Alian Labrousse, and Janek Kuczkiewicz of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). (For further information: PRT, at ++32 2 230 41 21 (Tel) or 230 36 70 (Fax) or visit the site http://www.radicalparty.org ).