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Burma Leader Denounces Trials.
Burma Leader Denounces Trials
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Tuesday, January 28, 1997 8:15 am EST
RANGOON, Burma (AP) -- Fourteen more people
have been sentenced to seven-year
prison terms in connection with student unrest,
the military said Tuesday, prompting
pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi to
denounce the secret trials.
The December protests, involving hundreds of
students, marked Burma's biggest street
unrest since 1988, when troops gunned down
thousands of demonstrators demanding an
end to military rule.
Five of those found guilty of agitation and
throwing rocks at security forces belonged to Suu
Kyi's National League for Democracy party, the
military statement said. The others were
not identified.
``None of those who had been tried were allowed
to have defense counsel and the trial was
not done in public, which means that it was not
a fair trial,'' Suu Kyi said.
The 14 were sentenced under emergency
legislation dating from 1950 that is frequently used
against political dissidents.
Twenty other people, including six members of
Suu Kyi's party, were sentenced Jan. 18 to
seven-year terms for fomenting the unrest.
Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize,
has said she shares the students' demands
for more civil liberties but denies playing a
role in their movement, as the government has
charged.
Burma's military government has opened the
country's once-isolated economy to foreign
investment but keeps a tight lid on political
dissent.
Suu Kyi, daughter of independence hero Aung
San, emerged as leader of the
pro-democracy movement in 1988. Her supporters
won parliamentary elections in 1990,
but the military government never honored the
results.
Suu Kyi was released from six years of house
arrest in 1995, but the authorities have limited
her movements recently.
[Associated Press, 28 January 1997].
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