[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index ][Thread Index ]

'Up to 40' election winners arreste



 South China Morning Post

Thursday  July 2  1998

Burma 
'Up to 40' election winners arrested 

ASSOCIATED PRESS in Bangkok 
Military authorities may have detained more than 40 parliamentary election
winners from the opposition National League for Democracy in the past week,
an exiled activist group said yesterday.

A spokesman for the All Burma Students' Democratic Front said details were
difficult to confirm, but the group had the names of three election winners
from Irrawaddy Division, near the capital, Rangoon, who had been arrested.

The spokesman said the crackdown had taken place in apparent response to a
June 23 demand by the league that the country's military regime convene by
August 21 the pro-democracy parliament which was elected in 1990 but never
allowed to meet.

The demand marked the first time the party, headed by 1991 Nobel peace
laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, had set a deadline for the military to convene
the parliament.

In Rangoon, the league sent a letter to the Government on Tuesday to
protest over reported restrictions against its elected candidates,
according to a copy of the letter circulated by the party.

Authorities had "verbally or in writing" asked elected candidates of the
party to sign pledges restricting their movements, and those who refused
were being imprisoned, it was claimed in the letter.

It was addressed to the Prime Minister and chairman of the ruling State
Peace and Development Council, General Than Shwe, Senior Chief Justice Aung
Toe and Attorney-General Tha Tun.

"Treating the elected candidates of the party as criminals amounts to
abusing the law as well as misusing power. Hence we strongly protest such
restrictions placed against the elected members of the party," said the
letter, signed by league chairman Aung Shwe.

The party also urged its would-be parliamentarians not to sign such
pledges, and advised those who had signed them not to honour them.

The letter did not make clear when such a restriction order had been
issued, or to how many people.

The military has staged several such roundups in the past in response to
plans by the league for some kind of political action.