Burma's Prime Minister, General Than Shwe, is to lay a wreath today at a Manila memorial to Filipino nationalist hero Jose Rizal - a doctor shot by the Spanish colonial regime.
Diplomats who have monitored the Rangoon junta's attempts to ingratiate itself with fellow Association of Southeast Asian Nations members believe few Filipinos will miss the irony.
Rizal, executed by a Spanish firing squad in 1896, became a martyr capable of producing almost religious fervour in his admirers.
General Than Shwe is head of a military regime that has imprisoned, and is now trying to isolate, Burma's charismatic opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
Like Rizal, Ms Aung San Suu Kyi has spent much of her life outside her country, yet is considered far too dangerous to be allowed to freely organise the opposition movement.
She has appealed to Filipinos to remind the general that their country is a 'bastion of democracy' and that 'the Philippines is better off under a democratic system than it was under an authoritarian regime'.