"How many can be said to be leading normal lives in a country where there are such deep divisions of heart and mind, where there is neither freedom nor security? When we ask for democracy, all we are asking is that our people should be allowed to live tranquilly under the rule of law, protected by institutions which will guarantee our rights, the rights that will enable us to maintain our human dignity, to heal long festering wounds and to allow love and courage to flourish. Is that such a very unreasonable demand?"

- Aung San Suu Kyi

Those who fight for democratic rights have long known that it is, to quote Nelson Mandela, "a long walk to freedom". In the 1920s, the Jarrow marchers took to the roads to press their case for the right to the dignity of work. Both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King knew that the sight of people on the march generated its own bandwagon of sympathy - and results. And in Burma's own history, the long walk to India by hundreds of families fleeing the advancing Japanese army is epic in the stories of heroism and tragedy it produced. Yet what others have struggled and fought for, we seem, in our own times and in our own cosy democracy, to take for granted. Why should that be?

There are rights that exist in our day to day lives which are so basic that we don't even notice they are there. In fact, in recent times, when some of those basic rights have been eroded in the so called war against terrorism, they have been taken from us with little debate and barely a word of protest. How can it be, in a nation which prides itself on its democratic and legal heritage, that its own citizens can be imprisoned for years on end with no charge being laid, and no legal process in sight? It seems that we are happy to consign our freedoms to some legal black hole, like an oubliette in an ancient prison. Our real freedom, we naïvely suppose, is always there, will always be there. It is like the sun rising every morning, or the water going down the plughole. Imagine though if we woke tomorrow to find yet more freedoms removed from us? What would we do? If there was a way to get them back, would we seek it? Would we struggle, fight, even risk our lives to do so? Would we expect the rest of the world - affronted - to help us in our struggle?

Imagine now if, the day after the New Labour landslide in 1997, a group had turned round and said, "Sorry, the fact that you have chosen this party so overwhelmingly is irrelevant. We are in charge." Would we struggle and fight and risk our lives then? Would we be outraged? Would the rest of the world be up in arms about such an affront to the democratic process? Sadly, history tells us that we couldn't count on any help unless it was in the political or economic interests of other countries to act. This may seem overly cynical, but it is precisely this cynicism which has left those struggling for democracy in Burma so alone. Where, for Burma, is George Bush's much vaunted love of freedom? Where, for Burma, is Tony Blair's commitment to a better world? Where, for Burma, is the ethical foreign policy which, it seemed for all of 48 hours, formed the central plank of New Labour's relations with the rest of the world?

The lack of action by so called freedom loving nations is lamentable. Count the column inches devoted to Iraq and Iran. Look at the huge efforts being made to rein in so-called rogue states like Syria and North Korea. A road accident in Kabul involving two American jeeps gets more international media coverage than year after year of systemic abuse of democracy and economy, of people and their chosen leaders, in Burma.

Pity poor Burma that it is not rich in oil or of pivotal strategic importance. Pity poor Burma that it does not present huge markets for global capitalism to exploit. And, in these circumstances, all praise and all power to those, like Aung San Suu Kyi, with whose words this piece started. The right to live useful, peaceful lives in a free society is, indeed, an extremely reasonable demand. And is it not shameful how little help we, in the rest of the world, give them in their struggle?