Turkey, Burundi, Myanmar cited as o

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Turkey, Burundi cited as offenders of MPs' rights 
01:20 p.m Mar 11, 1998 Eastern 
GENEVA, March 11 (Reuters) - Burundi, Myanmar and Turkey were cited on
Wednesday by a Geneva-based rights watchdog as being among the worst
offenders against the rights of parliamentarians. 

The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), which defends legislators subject to
civil and human rights violations, said it would bring up the cases of 134
deputies in 12 countries at the Geneva forum of the world's supreme rights
body, the U.N. Human Rights Commission, which starts on Monday. 

High on the list was Burundi where the IPU said at least 33 members of a
parliament disbanded in a July 1996 military coup were assassinated, injured
in attacks, forced into exile or were jailed on false or political charges. 

All were members of the main opposition party Frodebu, dominated by the
ethnic Hutu majority. 

Frodebu, the Front for Democracy in Burundi, won power in 1993 in Burundi's
first multi-party elections but was ousted in the coup that brought former
army major Pierre Buyoya to power. 

Many of the party's leaders fled to exile after the army takeover. 

Next on the IPU list of offenders was Myanmar (Burma) where it said 12
members of the National League for Democracy were still in detention. The
NLD won a landslide election victory in 1990, but the military government
never recognised the results. 

The IPU, which groups 137 legislatures around the world and was set up in
1889, also expressed concern about the arrests of what it said were scores
of NLD parliamentarian-elects in Myanmar in May 1996 and February 1997. 

In Turkey, the IPU voiced concern about the cases of 15 Kurdish
parliamentarians, six of whom were forced into exile after Turkey's largest
pro-Kurdish party, the People's Democracy Party, was dissolved. 

Others stood trial on charges of separatism, participating in a terrorist
organisation and making separatist statements, it said. 

Seven leading members of the People's Democracy Party were charged in
February with having links to separatist Kurdish guerrillas fighting for
Kurdish self-rule in the southeast. 

The IPU said it was also investigating the cases of eight parliamentarians
in Cambodia, eight in Colombia including five who had been assassinated
between 1986 and 1994, three in Djibouti, two in Gambia and eight in Nigeria. 

Also on its agenda were the cases of three parliamentarians in Indonesia,
two of whom were in jail on charges of insulting President Suharto. 

Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited