SPDC ARRESTS 54

[moe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Wednesday October 7 4:40 PM EDT 

Myanmar Government Arrests 54

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) _ Myanmar has arrested 54 people for staging
anti-government demonstrations,
accusing groups funded by the Vatican, the U.S. government and financier
George Soros of inciting unrest, the
military government said Wednesday.

Twenty-three of those arrested were members of the National League for
Democracy, the political party of
opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, authorities said. They included one
elected member of parliament.

``In July and August of this year, the NLD has stepped up its
confrontational activities and attempted to create
unrest and upheaval,'' Col. Thein Swe, a high-ranking military intelligence
officer, said at a news conference. It
wasn't clear whren the arrests took place.

The 54 were arrested for participating in brief ``hit-and-run'' street
demonstrations calling for an end to military
rule in Myanmar, also known as Burma. More than 1,000 people joined in the
first, near Yangon University on
Aug. 24. The second erupted near the Sule Pagoda in downtown Yangon on Sept. 22.

The top U.N. human rights official called the arrests very worrying.

They indicate that ``the government continues to ignore basic human rights
standards and the concern of the
international community,'' Mary Robinson said in a statement from her Geneva
headquarters.

Thein Swe said the dissidents instigated unrest in collaboration with exiled
Myanmar students in Thailand who are
backed financially by the Vatican-based Jesuit Refugee Services, the U.S.
government-funded National
Endowment for Democracy, and the Open Society Institute of billionaire
George Soros.

The 54 were not among the 967 oppostion members detained by the government
since May to prevent the NLD
from convening the parliament elected in 1990.

Suu Kyi's party won 82 percent of the seats in the assembly, but the
military has refused to allow it to meet. The
1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner was under six years of house arrest at the
time of the election.

Gen. Kyaw Win, the deputy chief of intelligence, told reporters the 967 were
not in fact detained, but had been
invited to government guest houses for discussions.

Asked when they would be invited to return home, he said it depended upon
the activities of the NLD.

Kyaw Win, who was a student activist in the 1960s, answers directly to
intelligence chief Gen. Khin Nyunt, one of
the military government's most powerful leaders. He insisted the military
had dealt gently with the NLD by not
sending its members to prison or outlawing the party.

``You remove a thorn with a needle, not an ax,'' he said. ``However, if the
NLD accelerates its confrontational
tactics to a certain extent, the government will have to act in the interest
of the people and the country.''

The London-based human rights group Amnesty International called the arrests
outrageous.

It said the government's 15-page statement detailing the alleged offenses
showed no evidence that the persons
named were engaged in anything other than peaceful civil disobedience.

It called on the government ``to release these people immediately unless
they are tried fairly for recognizable
criminal offenses.''