Burma Leader Denounces Trials.

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			Burma Leader Denounces Trials 
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			Tuesday, January 28, 1997 8:15 am EST 

                          RANGOON, Burma (AP) -- Fourteen more people 
			  have been sentenced to seven-year
                          prison terms in connection with student unrest, 
			  the military said Tuesday, prompting
                          pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi to 
			  denounce the secret trials. 

                          The December protests, involving hundreds of 
			  students, marked Burma's biggest street
                          unrest since 1988, when troops gunned down 
			  thousands of demonstrators demanding an
                          end to military rule. 

                          Five of those found guilty of agitation and 
			  throwing rocks at security forces belonged to Suu
                          Kyi's National League for Democracy party, the 
			  military statement said. The others were
                          not identified. 

                          ``None of those who had been tried were allowed 
			  to have defense counsel and the trial was
                          not done in public, which means that it was not 
			  a fair trial,'' Suu Kyi said. 

                          The 14 were sentenced under emergency 
			  legislation dating from 1950 that is frequently used
                          against political dissidents. 

                          Twenty other people, including six members of 
			  Suu Kyi's party, were sentenced Jan. 18 to
                          seven-year terms for fomenting the unrest. 

                          Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, 
			  has said she shares the students' demands
                          for more civil liberties but denies playing a 
			  role in their movement, as the government has
                          charged. 

                          Burma's military government has opened the 
			  country's once-isolated economy to foreign
                          investment but keeps a tight lid on political 
			  dissent. 

                          Suu Kyi, daughter of independence hero Aung 
			  San, emerged as leader of the
                          pro-democracy movement in 1988. Her supporters 
			  won parliamentary elections in 1990,
                          but the military government never honored the 
			  results. 

                          Suu Kyi was released from six years of house 
			  arrest in 1995, but the authorities have limited
                          her movements recently. 

			  [Associated Press, 28 January 1997].

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