BBC-Diplomats seek to free Briton i

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Subject: BBC-Diplomats seek to free Briton in Burma 

Thursday, September 9, 1999 Published at 20:24 GMT 21:24 UK
BBC UK

Diplomats seek to free Briton in Burma

Ms Goldwyn was arrested in a Rangoon market

British diplomats in the Burmese capital Rangoon are urgently trying to make
contact with a British human rights activist arrested on Tuesday for singing
revolutionary songs.

The BBC's Charlotte Bevan in Bangkok: "Friends say Rachel is passionately
committed to Burmese democracy"
Concern is growing for 28-year-old Rachel Goldwyn, from Barnes, south-west
London, who went missing after tying herself to a lamp-post.

She is being questioned by military police after taking part in a
pro-democracy demonstration in Rangoon.

Miss Goldwyn is the second Briton to be arrested in the last fortnight for
protesting against Burma's military dictatorship.

James Mawdsley, 26, who was arrested in Burma's Shan state, was sentenced to
17 years in jail without trial for carrying anti-government literature.

British Embassy officials have been prevented from seeing him.

Friends of Rachel said her passionate commitment to democracy led to her
arrest in the Burmese capital Rangoon on Tuesday.

Despite their request for immediate consular access, British diplomats have
still not been allowed to see her.

They are concerned that Rachel could be put on trial without legal
representation.

The Burmese military is holding thousands of democracy activists in
appalling conditions.

Before she left England, Rachel admitted to friends she feared being raped
and tortured inside a Burmese jail if she was arrested.

'Please be calm'

Miss Goldwyn's parents thought she was going to Germany.

But she travelled to Rangoon, leaving a letter in her bedroom which read:
"Dear Mum and Dad, I'll be home in about two weeks' time. I'll be deported
to Bangkok.

"Don't fear, don't panic, please be calm. I'm so sorry you had to learn
about this way. There was no other way."

Soon after arriving in Rangoon she was arrested while giving out leaflets
and singing the revolutionary song "We will never forget" in front of a
crowd of 300 people.

The Democratic Burmese Students' Organisation (UK) said a group of students
who sang the song in 1995 in received 20-year prison sentences.

Miss Goldwyn's mother, Dr Charmian Goldwyn, who is a GP, said she and her
TV-producer husband Ed, who live in Barnes, were desperately worried for
Rachel, the youngest of their three daughters.

Miss Goldwyn, who attended Goldolphin School in Hammersmith, west London,
was an economics graduate from the London School of Economics and had become
interested in the Burmese pro-democracy movement while working in a refugee
camp in Thailand two years ago.

"I am very proud of her, but I also desperately wish she hadn't done this,"
said Dr Goldwyn. "Really to do this sort of thing, to draw attention to the
terrible things that are going on in Burma, is very brave."

On Thursday, with 09-09-99 being an auspicious date, pro-democracy activists
protested all over Asia against the military regime in Burma, which insists
on calling the country Myanmar.