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NEWS - Myanmar Challenges Party to
- Subject: NEWS - Myanmar Challenges Party to
- From: Rangoonp@xxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 08 Jun 1999 20:01:00
Subject: NEWS - Myanmar Challenges Party to Detail Prison Transfers
NOTE: They are willing yet, in Burma's closed and resticted system,
providing good evidence would be difficult. How would a person obtain
information about system controlled by the regime that won't let them
even travel freely. It is difficult to take information from a 'locked'
safe.
Myanmar Challenges Party to Detail Prison Transfers
AP
07-JUN-99
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- Myanmar's military regime
challenged the opposition Monday to provide details on
prisoners allegedly moved from prison before a rare visit
by
the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The National League for Democracy has said that the ICRC
delegation was subjected to a sham during a visit to
Insein
Prison, where many of the country's political prisoners
are
held.
"It would be very interesting to know if the NLD is
willing to
and can provide us with names, dates and places where the
inmates were alleged to have been transferred just before
the ICRC's visit to the Insein correctional facility," a
government spokesman said in a statement made on
customary condition of anonymity.
Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader and winner of the
1991 Nobel Peace Prize, said last week that detainees at
the
prison in Myanmar's capital, Yangon, were transferred to
faraway prisons so the delegation would not see them.
Thousands of party members have been imprisoned or
detained over the past decade since Suu Kyi's party won
legislative elections. The military in Myanmar, also
known as
Burma, never allowed parliament to meet.
Suu Kyi's party normally finds it extremely difficult to
learn
what has happened to members who disappear into the
closed legal system. Often, the party is only able to
guess
what is happening based on information received from
family
members.
Former prisoners and human rights groups have called
conditions in Myanmar's prisons inhumane and intolerable
and said torture is common. Some political prisoners are
kept in tiny cells meant to house dogs.
Suu Kyi said the transfers are a hardship because they
put
prisoners hundreds of miles from their families. The
prisoners depend on their families for medicine and food
packages, she said.