(11/15/91) Dr. Sein Win Said Aung S

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Subject: (11/15/91) Dr. Sein Win Said Aung San Suu Kyi in Danger

                              Agence France Presse

                               November  15, 1991



HEADLINE: Nobel laureates asked to press for freedom for Burma's Aung San Suu
Kyi

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

 BODY:
    A Burmese opposition leader has appealed to former Nobel laureates to press 
the military regime in Rangoon to free Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained Burmese
dissident who won the 1991 Nobel peace prize.

    Sein Win,  prime minister of a dissident shadow government based in the
jungles along the Thai-Burma border, said Thursday that Aung San Suu Kyi was
reported to be on a hunger strike and possibly in poor health. 1991 Agence
France Presse, November 15, 1991                  
                                                                                
   "We are asking for total freedom. Not the freedom with conditions, not the
freedom to leave there, but the freedom in all things," he said at a news
conference sponsored by Senator Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat of New York.

   Moynihan, Republican Senator Steve Symms of Idaho, Democratic Congressmen Tom
Lantos of California and Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii joined  Sein Win  in calling
for Aung San Suu Kyi's release.

   Lantos made public a letter sent to Burma's Ambassador to Washington Thaung
by the Congressional Human Rights Caucus urging that his government allow a
member of an international humanitarian organization to verify Aung San Suu
Kyi's condition.

   "We have received deeply disturbing reports that Aung San Suu Kyi has been on
a hunger strike and is in very poor condition, possibly near death. Because
Burmese authorities have not allowed anyone to see her, we cannot confirm her
current state of health," the letter said.

   Symms said the dissident leader was "probably unaware that she has been
awarded the Nobel prize." The Nobel committee cited Aung San Suu Kyi's struggle 
for democracy in Burma as "one of the extraordinary examples of civil courage in
Asia." 1991 Agence France Presse, November 15, 1991                  
                                                                                
   Since then, Burmese authorities have blocked attempts by representatives of
the United Nations and foreign diplomat to visit her while assuring U.N.
Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar she was free to go into exile.

    Sein Win  stressed that the opposition sought her unconditional release.

   He said he had sent letters to previous winners of the Nobel peace prize
asking for their support as well as to the International Red Cross, the U.N.
Secretary General and Amnesty International, seeking ways to verify Aung San Suu
Kyi's health.

   Leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD), Aung San Suu Kyi was
detained in July 1989 during a military crackdown on the democratic opposition
and has been held incommunicado under house arrest since.

   The NLD nevertheless swept general elections in May, 1990, receiving an
estimated 80 percent of the votes, but its leaders have been arrested or forced 
to flee the country after the military voided the vote.

   Last year a majority of the elected representatives met in secret in Mandalay
and formed the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, a shadow
government based in the ethnic areas along the Thai-Burmese border. 
    Sein Win,  who has been in the United States since late last month to lobby 
U.S. leaders, appealed to the U.S. administration to give Burma the same
priority as Cambodia or Vietnam.

   "U.S. policy should not put Burma in the corner," he said.