HRW/Asia press release - sentences (r)

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Subject: Re: HRW/Asia press release - sentences

condemns sentencing of NLD supporters.

Free Burma Action Group France vigorousl condemns the harsh sentences 
given on Monday, March 18, to four members of the Burmese political 
opposition and said they were not given a fair trial. FBAGF will 
communicate this gross human rights outrage to leaders in the French 
Governmen, in the French Parliament, in the oppostion parties, and on the 
Web, as well as in its news organ, UVI.net.

Par Par Lay, Lu Zaw, U Htway and U Aung Soe, all members of the National 
League for Democracy (NLD), were given seven-year prison terms under the 
1950 Emergency Provisions Act. The sentencing took place not in a 
courtroom but in Mandalay jail where the four have been held since their 
arrest on January 7, 1996.

Another NLD member, U Saw Hlaing, was sentenced to five years in prison 
on Monday apparently in relation to a minor traffic accident on March 16, 
in which the car he was driving collided with a rickshaw in Kyungone 
village near Toungoo. Human Rights Watch/Asia said the charges against U 
Saw Hlaing were politically motivated, and that his trial, held in a 
closed session in Kyungone, was also unfair.

Members of the NLD, the party of the Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, 
have been systematically persecuted since the party won an overwhelming 
victory in the elections of May 1990.  Human Rights Watch/Asia called on 
the Burmese authorities to release all five men immediately and 
unconditionally and to allow all Burmese to fully exercise their right to 
freedom of association. Human Rights Watch/Asia also called on the 
international community at the current session  of the Commission on 
Human Rights in Geneva to press for a representative of the UN to be 
permanently present in Burma to report on abuses of fundamental rights.