Australia: Burma warned over arrest

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Subject: Australia: Burma warned over arrests.


	
			Burma warned over arrests
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	The Federal Government has taken its toughest stand yet against 
repression in Burma, delivering a strong protest to the country's 
military junta and warning of possible further action.

	Amid the latest crackdown on Burma's democracy activists, the 
Foreign Minister, Mr Alexander Downer, warned at the weekend that 
Australia would "monitor the situation to see what further action we can 
take".

	Australia is likely to come under increasing international 
pressure to support proposed United States legislation imposing bans on 
new investments in Burma if the junta widens its repression to include 
acts such as re-arresting the democracy leader, Ms Aung San Suu Kyi.

	Mr Downer has in the past maintained that Australia's trade with 
Burma was so insignificant that the ruling State Law and Order 
Restoration Council would be able to dismiss any sanctions imposed by 
Canberra as irrelevant.

	Mr Downer has instructed Australia's ambassador in Rangoon, Mr 
Stuart Hume, to protest to the ruling council "in the strongest terms" 
about more than 119 arrests to stop a meeting of supporters of Ms Suu 
Kyi's National League for Democracy, which won 1990 elections.

	The protest is likely to be formally delivered today.

	Mr Downer said the action to supress the NLD's planned three-day 
congress starting last Friday was "totally unacceptable and yet another 
example of the SLORC's total disregard for normal political freedoms".

	Mr Hume has been instructed to appeal to the SLORC to release all 
the prisoners detained in the latest crackdown.

	He is also expected to make clear to the junta that Australia 
would consider further action if the prisoners were not released.

	The Governemnt has not changed the policy of the previous Labour 
administration, which was not to encourage nor discourage Australian 
companies to do business in Burma.

	The policy includes a series of benchmarks designed to reward the 
junta for progress towards democracy.

	Diplomats and analysts fear the junta has embarked on a campaign 
to crush the spirit of Ms Suu Kyi, who was released from house arrest 
last year.

	Soldiers on Saturday prevented Ms Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace 
laureate, from making a speech and arrested democracy activists at 
checkpoints near her home.

	The NLD meeting was called to mark the party's ehghth anniversary 
and to consider the format of a proposed constitution that is being 
drafted by a SLORC-sanctioned national convention.

	The US is leading worldwide demands for the junta to end its 
repression and release arrested activists.

[By LINDSAY MURDOCH, international affairs correspondent, Canberra, 
Australia, 30 September 1996].

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