Yangon (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Myanmar’s military junta announced today that it was taking another step on its "road map" to democracy by drafting a new charter. For many an expert this step is only an attempt to distract the international community from its continued repression of dissidents. For now state media continue their anti-Western propaganda with direct attacks against the United States, guilty in their eyes of training Buddhist monks in anti-regime street protests.

After 14 years of talks on drafting guidelines for a new constitution, the generals who have run Myanmar since 1962 have named 54 people to a committee tasked with drafting the new constitutional dispensation.

The announcement came after weeks during which the military regime was under international pressure over its bloody crackdown on last month’s peaceful protests. Officially only 10 people died and another 3,000 were arrested. Unofficial sources put the death toll in the hundreds with more than 6,000 arrested.

In the wake of the violence, the United States and the European Union tightened sanctions on the junta whilst the United Nations put pressure on the regime to open talks with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest.

Some experts explain the junta's decision to set up a charter committee as "a gesture" aimed at defusing the pressure on the military government.

Under the regime's "road map" to democracy, the new constitution is to be voted on by the public in a referendum, with the process eventually leading to elections.

Even assuming that elections are actually held, the leading figure of the pro-democracy opposition, Aung San Suu Kyi, will not be allowed to run. A charter guideline bars candidates married to foreigners from running for office. Ms Aung San was married to Briton Michael Aris, who died in 1999.

Despite its sham openness, the junta has not stopped the hunt for its opponents in the country’s monasteries and villages. According to Mizzima News, which is close to Burmese exiles, the generals have ordered local police to mount searches and conduct raids in monasteries and places where monks live in northern Burma's Kachin state and neighbouring Sino-Burmese border areas.

This is the third time that Buddhist monasteries are raided since early October.

“The earlier teams had raided and searched monasteries in the town but this time they raided even monasteries on the hills and in remote areas,” anonymous sources said.

Mizzima News reports that Chinese authorities are also conducting raids on monasteries in border towns, where several Burmese monks reside.