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NEWS Interview-Suu Kyi Says Myanmar
- Subject: NEWS Interview-Suu Kyi Says Myanmar
- From: Rangoonp@xxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 20:17:00
Subject: NEWS Interview-Suu Kyi Says Myanmar Repression Worsens
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Interview-Suu Kyi Says Myanmar Repression Worsens
Reuters
24-MAR-99
BANGKOK, March 24 (Reuters) - Myanmar
opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi says the
military government has imposed on her party and
its members their worst sufferings over the past
year.
"What we have suffered over the last year is far
more than we have suffered over the last six or
seven years. What is happening is that the
authorities are trying their best to crush the party,"
she said in a recent video-taped interview obtained
by Reuters.
"But they have not succeeded. As you can see we
are quite active here," she added.
The leader of the National League for Democracy
party (NLD) said about 150 NLD members of
parliament elected in the 1990 general election
remained under detention by the military.
She also estimated that about 300-400 party
members were being detained by the authorities.
"The human rights situation in Myanmar has
deteriorated very badly indeed. It has come to the
point where the activities of the regime are
tantamount to criminal activities."
The ruling State Peace and Development Council
(SPDC) stepped up action against the party late last
year after Suu Kyi demanded that the government
convene a People's Parliament of MPs elected in
the 1990 polls.
The NLD swept that election but the military refused
to acknowledge the result.
The People's Parliament proposal infuriated the
military which told the NLD that there could not be
dialogue between the two sides unless the demand
was withdrawn.
The SPDC says most NLD detainees are being held
in government guesthouses to prevent them from
fulfilling their party's call for the assembly of
parliament. They will be released if they rejected the
proposal, it says.
"The repression is on a very large scale but the
world has not grasped the extent of the repression
because it has been drawn out over a number of
months," Suu Kyi said.
"If what the military has done in the last eight to nine
months had been done in a few weeks then the
world would have sat up and taken notice," she
added.
Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace prize winner, said
the world did not hear about the atrocities in her
country because the foreign press had not been
allowed to visit her or the country to investigate and
report it.
"We cannot spread news of our activities very
widely...foreign journalists are not allowed to come
and see what is going on," she added.
Suu Kyi said the party had filed law suits in courts
against the home ministry and the military
intelligence division complaining about their
repression. "But the authorities have taken no
action whatsoever," she said.
Close aides to Suu Kyi said she was very upset
about the condition of her gravely ill British husband
but has declined to talk about him publicly.
Suu Kyi has vowed to stay put in Yangon, fearing
that if she goes to Britain to see her
cancer-stricken husband, Michael Aris, she might
not be allowed to return to Myanmar, they told
Reuters.
Family sources say Aris, 52, an Oxford academic
who has been denied a Myanmar visa for the past
three years, is dying from prostate cancer that has
spread to his spine and lungs.
Aris has requested a visa to travel to Yangon, but
Myanmar's military government has said Suu Kyi,
who is in good health, should visit her terminally ill
husband instead.