Burma Leader's Home Blocked

[ausgeo@xxxxxxx]

Burma Leader's Home Blocked 
May 28, 1997 
RANGOON, Burma (AP) -- Burmese riot police blocked the homes of pro-democracy 
leader Daw  Aung San Suu Kyi and other opposition members today to prevent a 
meeting of their political party. 

The meeting aimed to commemorate her party's landslide victory in a 1990 
national election that the military has refused to honor. Suu Kyi's National 
League for Democracy party won 82 percent of the seats in a parliament the 
regime refused to convene. 

In a massive sweep across Burma, the military government has arrested at least 
316 members of Suu Kyi's party to prevent them from traveling to Rangoon for 
the two-day meeting beginning today. 

More than 200 NLD members made it to Rangoon but, following the party's policy 
of nonviolence, they did not challenge riot police at the barricades blocking 
their leaders' homes and the NLD's Rangoon office. 

Suu Kyi, who won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for her nonviolent struggle for 
democracy, has continued to appeal for the convening of the 1990 parliament. 

On Tuesday, she repeated her call for the government to enter into a dialogue 
with her party to solve the country's political and economic problems. 

While the West has condemned the arrests of Suu Kyi's supporters, Southeast 
Asian governments have been silent about the crackdown. 

But business seems to be taking a turn for the worse in Burma as a result of 
the repression. The value of Burma's currency, the kyat, is plunging on the 
widely used black market. 

Officially, the kyat trades at about six for one U.S. dollar. Nearly everyone, 
however, trades the kyat at the black market rate, about 180-185 kyat for one 
dollar now. That's down from 160 kyat for a dollar before U.S. economic 
sanctions took effect last Wednesday, the same day the military began its 
arrests. 

President Clinton invoked the sanctions because of the military's increased 
repression of the democracy movement.