Burma is a country of peace-loving and naturally humble people in South East Asia. After its Independence from the British Empire, British style parliamentary democracy survived in Burma for only a decade. In 1958, the first military regime annexed power from the civilian government.

Although the military regimes carried out multi-party general elections in 1960 and 1990, the military generals just ignored the people's opinion when people voted against pro-military parties and showed their overwhelming support for pro-democracy parties.

The current military regime's persistent refusal to recognise election results has led to international sanctions on it. In 1997, following longstanding protests against Western investment in Burma, President Bill Clinton introduced US economic sanctions against the regime.

And in 2003, after the infamous Depayin Massacre, where reportedly 300 to 500 members of the main opposition party, the National League for Democracy, were murdered in cold-blood by the regime, President George Bush passed the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act to toughen existing sanctions against Burma.

US's eagerness to impose sanctions on Burma prompted the European Union to follow suite though the latter's were incredibly weak. Among other trivial measures, EU sanctions include a limited investment ban which kindly allows European companies to invest in Burma's off-shore gas fields.

In fact, revenue from gas fields is one of the two main sources of income for Burma 's military regime the other being dividends from the illegal drug trade carried out by pro-regime militia groups along Burma-China border.

The EU's lacklustre approach to sanctions has emboldened Russia, China and other Asian countries to make lucrative business deals with the Burmese military regime. As such, even under American and European sanctions, the Burmese military regime is thriving while the living conditions of ordinary people are deteriorating day by day.

And it gives a chance to some critics to say that the sanctions just hurt the ordinary people too much. But, there are two weak points in their argument.

Imprisoned, tortured

The people in Burma were already very poor long before the sanctions came. This because of corruption and mismanagement by successive military regimes. With or without sanctions, they will still be poor as long as a despotic military regime is in power.

Another point is that if we scrap sanctions, what else we can do to put pressure on the military regime to stop committing atrocities against the people? Note that according to the Free Burma Rangers, a humanitarian group helping internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees along Burma's east and west borders, there are more than one million IDPs and refugees from Burma.

These ethnic minority refugees fled their homes to avoid being killed and raped by Burmese soldiers and to avoid being used as forced labour or recruited as child-soldiers in the Burmese army.

Burma's icon of liberty Aung San Suu Kyi is currently serving her eleventh year of detention along with many thousand other political prisoners - they are not just imprisoned but also tortured.

Burma's ordinary people have virtually no access to the Internet. The radio and television stations plus the newspaper companies are run by the regime and all other publications are strictly censored.

For this, the Burmese regime enjoys the top spot in Transparency International's corruption index. The regime's excessive logging and building of huge dams along rivers are also causing massive damage to the environment.

Besides this, countless number of women and children from Burma have been trafficked for the sex industries in neighbouring countries though Burma's military government usually just pretends as if nothing is happening. And now Burma has become a country with highest HIV positive rate in the region.

And latest of all, an Australian media organisation recently reported that the military junta has attempted to procure nuclear weapons technology from North Korea's rogue regime.

Only way out

So we cannot let these things go on and on and on without restraint. Burma has nowadays become an international liability.

Currently, the US is spearheading an effort in the United Nations to get the UN Security Council to take action on Burma. But what will UNSC do? A mere Security Council resolution urging the Burmese regime to make reforms won't be enough to help Burma's long suffering people - we need something more practical than that.

One option we have is to keep Burma's seat vacant at the United Nations General Assembly until the military regime has made significant progresses in the democratisation of Burma. Unlike sanctions, keeping Burma's seat vacant in the UN will not do any harm to ordinary Burmese people.

At the same time though, it will exert an immense and tremendous pressure on the military regime. The most important thing to remember here is that the UN has already tested such a measure in the past on Cambodia and got the desired results within a short period of time.

So if we regard sanctions as ineffective and we also don't want an Iraq-style military intervention, keeping Burma 's seat vacant is the only way out.

DR TAYZA THURIA is currently pursuing his post-grad medical studies in the UK. Born in Rangoon, he helped organised student protests while in medical school there against the military regime in 1996. His pro-democracy activities resulted in him being briefly detained by Burmese troops in 1990.