REUTER: SUNDAY FORUM; SOME ACTIVIST

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Subject: REUTER: SUNDAY FORUM; SOME ACTIVISTS HAD BEEN CHARGED

 SUNDAY NLD FORUM: SOME ACTIVISTS HAD BEEN CHARGED

 (Recasts with Suu Kyi speech)
     By Deborah Charles
     RANGOON, June 2 (Reuter) - Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi
told supporters on Sunday they should refuse to go to government-staged
rallies which denounce the democracy movement.
     Suu Kyi told a crowd of about 5,000 people gathered outside her home
the rallies staged by the government over the past few weeks were not a
real sign of support for the ruling military, and will likely hurt the
government more than help it.
     "A mass rally should be one attended by people who want to be there,
not those who are forced to go," she told the cheering crowd standing in
the rain outside her front gates.
     "If people are forced to support unwillingly they will be more and
more dissatisfied. Far from benefitting the government, it will actually
hurt them more," she said in her regular Sunday speech to suppporters.
     Suu Kyi suggested that people called to attend the rallies should say:
"We don't want to go."
     Over the past week, the government has staged dozens of rallies across
the country where hundreds of thousands of people shout slogans and listen
to speeches denouncing the democracy movement and foreign interference.
     But many Burmese say the rallies are not spontaneous demonstrations of
support by the people, because they are forced by the military to attend or
pay a fine.
     Official media earlier reported one of the country's most powerful
generals denouncing democracy activists as imperialist stooges and calling
on people to crush "common enemies."
     Lieutenant-General Khin Nyunt, head of military intelligence and
Secretary One of the ruling State Law and Order Restoration Council
(SLORC), said Burmese people will not tolerate the "stooges" who are trying
to upset the nation's stability.
     "Nationals cannot tolerate the egoism of neocolonialists and their
stooges who attempt to use the peaceful life of the people as a stepping
stone," state-run newspapers reported Khin Nyunt saying in a speech on
Saturday.
     "The people, who do not wish to face a nightmare like 1988, are
holding mass rallies to support nation building of the State Law and Order
Restoration Council and to denounce subversives."
     The SLORC took power in 1988 after crushing pro-democracy uprisings in
a conflict which left thousands dead or imprisoned.
     The rallies and recent verbal and written attacks by the SLORC come on
the heels of a controversial meeting of senior members of Suu Kyi's
National League for Democracy (NLD) party.
     The NLD party defied intimidation by the SLORC and a police roundup of
activists to hold the three-day meeting, which the SLORC said would cause
anarchy.
     NLD sources said on Sunday oilce had released about half the 261 NLD
members arrested before the meeting, and the party expected most of the
others to be set free soon. But Suu Kyi said some others had been charged
and were being held in Insein Prison.
     The SLORC has not said anything about charging any of the people it
detained nearly two weeks ago. It said on Saturday it had released NLD
members that it had detained for questioning ahead of the meeting in an
effort to stop unrest or "anarchy."
  REUTER
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