UK and Australia's response on SLOR

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Subject: UK and Australia's response on SLORC's crackdown

30Sep96 BURMA: INTERNATIONAL - TROOPS HALT SUU KYI'S DEMOCRACY CONGRESS. 
By Richard Savill in Rangoon.
HEAVILY armed security police kept up a blockade on all roads to the home of
Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese pro-democracy leader, throughout the weekend
to stop a congress of her party from taking place.
More than 300 supporters of her National League for Democracy have been
detained since Thursday in a fresh attempt by the military authorities to
stifle her political influence.
Riot police wielding clubs and semi-automatic rifles chased away anyone
trying to approach Miss Suu Kyi's lakeside villa in Rangoon. Three tourists,
including a Briton, were briefly detained for questioning.
Miss Suu Kyi has not been seen in public since last week and the police
blockade prevented her from delivering her weekend speeches for the first
time since she was released from house arrest in July last year.
Diplomats and journalists were unable to contact her by telephone. A senior
government official said that she had not been re-arrested but no one was
allowed to go to her house for the duration of the three-day congress,
scheduled to end last night.
There was an air of normality in the centre of Rangoon yesterday but in the
area around Miss Suu Kyi's home on University Avenue in the north of the
city there was a more oppressive atmosphere.
Troops sat in lorries parked in side-streets and signs warned against the
use of cameras. A group of news photographers and cameramen were temporarily
barred from leaving their hotel by plainclothes military intelligence
officers on Saturday. They were warned not to take pictures.
Miss Suu Kyi's weekend meetings have become a tourist attraction and the
British Embassy confirmed that a British tourist had been briefly detained
and released.
Fiona Barrows, an Australian, said her boy friend, Andrew Hewlett, from
London, and two other Europeans were temporarily taken away for questioning
on Saturday.
"We came to hear her speak because we wanted to understand her point of
view," said Miss Barrows. "The soldiers told us to leave and when Andy asked
why, they pushed him, and dragged him and the other two away."
Burmese officials said the ruling State Law and Order Restoration Council
had decided to prevent the congress from taking place because it did not
have government permission. They said Miss Suu Kyi had collaborated with
foreign governments to undermine Burma's stability.
When the NLD tried to hold a similar gathering in May, the government
detained more than 260 party delegates. Most were released after 10 days but
several dozen were charged and given long prison terms.
A government official said the timing of the release of those held at
weekend would depend upon the response from the NLD.
The New Light of Myanmar newspaper, a state-owned mouthpiece, stepped up
attacks on Miss Suu Kyi yesterday, citing her recent visits to Western
embassies, including those of America and Britain, as evidence of her
efforts to incite instability.
British officials had been to her home three times, the newspaper reported.
A British official said there was no basis to the claim that it wanted her
to hold the congress.
Miss Suu Kyi has said that she wants to see dialogue with the ruling junta
before the end of the year.
While diplomats believe that there are degrees of division within the
military regime, there is no indication that it is prepared to meet her.
Miss Suu Kyi's options, therefore, appear limited.
She can continue to press for US sanctions and for a tourist boycott of
Burma. But critics of sanctions believe they will be only symbolic because
there is not enough American business in Burma to threaten the economy.
Some believe that Miss Suu Kyi will be re-arrested if she continues to defy
the regime and there is violence on the streets.
But there was no mass protest at the weekend and observers question whether
her supporters will risk going beyond their present passive stance.
(c) Telegraph Group Limited, London, 1996. 
UNITED KINGDOM 
DAILY TELEGRAPH 30/9/96 P12 

 30Sep96 UK: INTERNATIONAL ACTION NEEDED AGAINST BURMA -BRITAIN. 11:51 GMT  
LONDON, Sept 30 (Reuter) - Britain said on Monday it believed fresh
international action was needed against the Burmese government after it
stopped opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from delivering a weekend speech.
"The UK believes it will be necessary to take further international action
against the SLORC (Burma's ruling army council). We will be proposing
possible measures to European Union partners," the Foreign Office said in a
statement.  
A Foreign Office source said Britain would raise the subject of possible
action against Burma at a meeting of senior officials of the 15 EU member
states in Brussels on Tuesday.
He declined to speculate on the nature of the international action Britain
would propose.
"We deplore SLORC actions preventing Aung San Suu Kyi from delivering her
weekend speech: restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly are a breach
of basic human rights," the Foreign Office statement said. It said Britain's
ambassador in Rangoon had been asked to raise the matter with the government.  
(c) Reuters Limited 1996
REUTER NEWS SERVICE

30Sep96 AUSTRALIA: BURMA WARNED OVER ARRESTS. 
By LINDSAY MURDOCH., Canberra.

The Federal Government has taken its toughest stand yet against repression
in Burma, delivering a strong protest to the country's military junta and
warning of possible further action. Amid the latest crackdown on Burma's
democracy activists, the Foreign Minister, Mr Alexander Downer, warned at
the weekend that Australia would "monitor the situation to see what further
action we can take". Australia is likely to come under increasing
international pressure to support proposed United States legislation
imposing bans on new investments in Burma if the junta widens its repression
to include acts such as re-arresting the democracy leader, Ms Aung San Suu
Kyi. Mr Downer has in the past maintained that Australia's trade with Burma
was so insignificant that the ruling State Law and Order Restoration Council
would be able to dismiss any sanctions imposed by Canberra as irrelevant. Mr
Downer has instructed Australia's ambassador in Rangoon, Mr Stuart Hume, to
protest to the ruling council "in the strongest terms" about more than 119
arrests to stop a meeting of supporters of Ms Suu Kyi's National League for
Democracy, which won 1990 elections. The protest is likely to be formally
delivered today. Mr Downer said the action to suppress the NLD's planned
three-day congress starting last Friday was "totally unacceptable and yet
another example of the SLORC's total disregard for normal political
freedoms". Mr Hume has been instructed to appeal to the SLORC to release all
the prisoners detained in the latest crackdown.  He is also expected to make
clear to the junta that Australia would consider further action if the
prisoners were not released.
The Government has not changed the policy of the previous Labor
administration, which was not to encourage nor discourage Australian
companies to do business in Burma.
The policy includes a series of benchmarks designed to reward the junta for
progress towards democracy.  Soldiers on Saturday prevented Ms Suu Kyi, a
Nobel peace laureate, from making a speech and arrested democracy activists
at checkpoints near her home.AGE (MELBOURNE) 30/9/96 P2
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