AP: SLORC Blackmails NLD Members

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  SLORC Blackmails NLD Members

   BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- Burma's military government has pressured
hundreds of followers to quit pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's
political party, Suu Kyi said Monday.
   So far, 14 of the 262 party members arrested in May have quit, but Suu
Kyi says the resignations are invalid because they were coerced.
   "There were threats of prison sentences, loss of business opportunities,
evictions from state-owned apartments, dismissal from their jobs of family
members who belonged to the civil service," Suu Kyi wrote in her weekly
syndicated newspaper column, monitored here.
   Most of those arrested were representatives elected to Parliament in a
1990 election that the country's military regime never honored. The
government detained the opposition figures to keep them from attending a
conference of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy in late May.
   Suu Kyi won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for her nonviolent efforts to
bring democracy to Burma, which the military has ruled since 1962. She held
the conference despite the government round-up, and the confrontation has
only increased the number of supporters who come to weekend political
forums outside her home.
   Military leaders say they have released all but three of those arrested.
   However, Suu Kyi said Monday that as many as 69 still are being held,
with 20 transferred to Insein Prison, notorious for torture, where they
will be sentenced to long terms.
   
KT
ISBDA