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SCMP-EU seeks rights mission on hee



Subject: SCMP-EU seeks rights mission on heels of Amnesty torture report

South China Morning Post
Thursday, July 1, 1999
BURMA

EU seeks rights mission on heels of Amnesty torture report
AGENCIES in Bangkok

The European Union is reportedly proposing to send a fact-finding mission to
Rangoon to discuss the country's poor human rights record.
But Burma's junta had failed as yet to respond to the proposal, the Bangkok
Post said yesterday.

The EU hoped the mission would eventually lead to its mediating a meeting
between the ruling State Peace and Development Council and National League
for Democracy (NLD) leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the Post quoting unnamed Thai
officials as saying.

The junta has refused to open a political dialogue with the NLD, which won
the 1990 general election by a landslide, unless Ms Aung San Suu Kyi is
excluded from the talks.

The Post's report coincided with the publication of an Amnesty International
report detailing the torture and killing by the Burmese regime of members of
the Karen, Shan and Karenni ethnic minorities.

Amnesty said it based its findings on interviews with more than 100
refugees.

A government spokesman said yesterday the refugees interviewed were family
members and sympathisers of "armed ethnic terrorist groups". He called
Amnesty's report part of a smear campaign, and defended forced relocations
of villagers as "temporary when necessary and done to protect them from
being terrorised by the armed insurgent groups".

EU diplomats in Bangkok expressed annoyance that their proposal had been
leaked to the press, saying the media attention might scuttle its efforts to
persuade the junta to accept its mission.

The decision to send a delegation to Rangoon, agreed upon in Brussels about
two weeks ago, represented a shift in EU policy towards the military regime,
diplomats said.

"Change in Burma is a political goal but it can only be achieved if we talk
to the people," one European diplomat said.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has long maintained that
"constructive engagement" with Burma, which joined the bloc in July 1997, is
the best means of bringing about political reform.