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NEWS Interview-Suu Kyi Says Myanmar



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               was withdrawn.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.