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The BurmaNet News: April 30, 1998



------------------------ BurmaNet ------------------------
"Appropriate Information Technologies, Practical Strategies"
----------------------------------------------------------

The BurmaNet News: April 30, 1998
Issue #995

Noted in Passing: "When we deny aid and investment to a government, such as
Burma's, that stifles democracy and brutally suppresses human rights, that
is not interference. That is recognizing and standing up for the clearly
expressed will of the Burmese people." -- U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright (see KYODO (JAPAN): ALBRIGHT SLAMS HUMAN RIGHTS RECORDS)

HEADLINES:
===========
BKK POST: JUNTA SENTENCES SIX TO DEATH
SIAM RAT (THAILAND): SHAN VILLAGERS FORCED TO EVACUATE
BKK POST: DEADLINE EXTENDED FOR EXPULSION OF WORKERS
KYODO (JAPAN): ALBRIGHT SLAMS HUMAN RIGHTS RECORDS
BPF: DSIF TRIUMPHS IN GENEVA
LA TIMES (OP-ED): SAY 'NO' TO THE MILITARY REGIME
NEWSWEEK: THE LADY AND THE NOOSE
UNCHR: FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION (BURMA)
UNCHR: RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE (BURMA
****************************************************************

BANGKOK POST: JUNTA SENTENCES SIX TO DEATH
30 April, 1998

Two face gallows for trying to meet envoy

Burma's military junta has handed down death sentences to six
antigovernment activists accused of plotting terrorist activities, a senior
junta official said yesterday.

In a statement received in Bangkok, the official said the six, along with
33 others sentenced to between seven and 14 years in prison, were full
members or recruits of the Thailand-based All Burma Students Democratic
Front (ABSDF).

"The court [has] sentenced ... six persons to serve 14 years imprisonment
and death penalty and none of them are actually students," the official
statement said.

"Four of them were from the ABSDF armed terrorist group caught inside the
country with explosives for sabotage activities and the other two were
recruited from within the country," it said.

The six were named by the Rangoon junta official as Ko Thein, 44, Naing
Aung, 31, Thant Zaw Swe, 31, Myint Han, 44, Khin Hlaing, 51, and Let Yar
Htun, 29.

The statement followed an earlier ABSDF release saying two students had
been sentenced to death for trying to present UN Special Envoy Alvaro De
Soto, who visited Rangoon earlier this year, with a letter detailing human
rights abuses.

* Burmese human rights activists said on Tuesday they have called a
three-day fast starting on May 3 to protest investment in their country by
US-based Atlantic Richfield Oil Co (Arco), AFP reported yesterday.

The Burma Forum also said it would stage a demonstration on May 4 outside
Arco's annual shareholder meeting in Los Angeles.

****************************************************************

SIAM RAT: SHAN VILLAGERS FORCED TO EVACUATE BY ARMY
20 April, 1998

(BurmaNet Editor's Note: Siam Rat is a Thai-language daily newspaper based
in Bangkok that focuses on political and international issues.  The English
translation has been slightly modified.)

On 19 April, authorities of the Human Rights Fund of Burma's Shan State
said in a dispatch that in 1997, the Burmese military government began to
evacuate 55,557 families of a total of more than 300,000 Shan villagers
living in 1,478 villages located in the central region of the Shan State,
namely Mong Kunhing, Nam Chang, Laikham, Kehsi, Mong Kaing, Mong Nai, Mong
Lang, Khua, Mong Pine, Loi Louem, and Mong Mong to live in major cities
without any preparation for shelters to accommodate them.  Many villagers
were unable to be evacuated on schedule.  As a result, the Burmese forces
killed 664 villagers when they refused to move out of their villages on time.

The killing of the Shan people has prompted an influx of more than 80,000
Shan State refugees into Thailand at the Ban Huai Phung pass in Muang
District of Mae Hong Son province and the Ban Nong Uk pass in Chiang Dao
District of Chiang Mai Province.  These refugees have scattered to work at
various factories and construction sites in major cities, such as Chiang
Mai and Bangkok, despite the fact that the Thai Government has no policy to
provide shelter to refugees fleeing from fighting.

Jao-ud Kasi, deputy secretary general of the Shan State Army, said that
fighting has been raging on in the central region of the Shan State between
Burmese armed forces and the Shan State Army. Colonel Yotsuk, commander of
the Shan State Army, sent a note to Gen. Khint Nyunt, Burmese military
leader, protesting the killing and forced evacuation of the Shan villagers.
 However, no response has been received from the Burmese military
leadership so far while brutal persecution of the Shan villagers continues
unabated without paying any heed to human rights.  Worse still, after each
assault on the Shan villagers, the Burmese forces always throw the blame on
the villagers themselves.

A highly-placed source close to the Thai Government disclosed that the
evacuation and killing has been carried out with the goal of moving in
ethnic Burmese people of the Burman race from Rangoon to settle in the
region.  In addition, the Burmese military junta has also employed all
kinds of tactics, including economic exploitation and armed suppression,
against the various ethnic minority groups and anti-Burmese government
movements.  It is anticipated that the Burmese Government will set up armed
suppression against these resistance groups in the year 2000. The source
went on to say that at present, the Burmese armed forces have employed
modern weapons purchased from China, including 800 GM trucks stationed west
of Tuangkyi and armored personnel carriers in various districts bordering
the northern area of Thailand's Mae Hong Son Province in preparation for
fighting against the Shan State forces and other resistance groups.

****************************************************************

BANGKOK POST: DEADLINE EXTENDED FOR EXPULSION OF ILLEGAL WORKERS
30 April, 1998

30 days granted to study labour supply

The deadline for repatriation of foreigners working for rice mills,
quarries and rubber plantations will be extended from tomorrow for another
30 days.

Deputy Prime Minister Bhichai Rattakul, who chairs a national committee to
solve foreign labour problems, said the panel had agreed to give the
Employment Department 30 more days after May 1 to find if there was a
shortage of labour in rice mills, quarries and rubber plantations as stated
by some entrepreneurs before deciding whether to send foreign workers of
these workplaces back home.

The Chuan Leekpai administration has a policy to repatriate about 300,000
foreign workers this year.

According to Mr Bhichai, a total of 191,050 foreign workers including
33,495 from the service sector, 8,399 from the transport sector, 20,506
from the commercial sector, 19,995 from the garment industry, 46,773 from
the food industry, 8,983 from heavy industry, 4,914 from the chemical
industry, 10,539 from the wood-related industry, and 2,326 from the paper
and printing industry already went home. 

Under the April 28 cabinet resolution, Burmese, Cambodian and Laotian
workers have been allowed to continue working in 13 border provinces but
cannot stay overnight in Thailand.

These people can also seek Thai authorities' permission to work for the
fisheries industry and other related industries in 22 provinces for another
year.

Some 40 representatives from the Rice Mills Association of Thailand asked
Mr Bhichai to ensure that concerned officials will not take action against
millers who continue to employ foreigners after the May 1 deadline.

****************************************************************

KYODO NEWS SERVICE (JAPAN): ALBRIGHT SLAMS HUMAN RIGHTS RECORDS OF CHINA,
MYANMAR
28 April, 1998

Tokyo -- U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Tuesday in Tokyo
that the human rights records of China and Myanmar both fail to pass muster
and urged them to adhere to internationally recognized standards of behavior.

Albright told Sophia University students during a lecture that the United
States and Japan both 'wish to see a China where the authorities do not
fear freedom of expression, but rather see it as essential to the
development of a stable society.'

Speaking just ahead of a visit to Beijing beginning Wednesday, she said,
'While some Chinese dissidents have been released to exile in recent
months, the Chinese government's repression of dissent and religious
freedom has not ceased.'

Albright arrived in Japan earlier Tuesday and held talks with Foreign
Minister Keizo Obuchi and Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto.

She added, however, that concern over human rights violations in China
should be accompanied by appreciation of 'ways in which China is changing'
for the better, such as the fact that the Chinese government is now less
involved in the lives of its citizens than at any time in the last 50 years.

'This year has seen hopeful stirrings of a dialogue among China's students,
scholars and officials about the need for political and economic change to
go together,' she noted.

With regard to Myanmar, otherwise known as Burma, Albright dismissed
criticism from that country's junta that the U.S. has been interfering in
its internal affairs by suspending aid and investment, assailing its human
rights record and speaking up for the pro-democracy movement led by Nobel
Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

'When we deny aid and investment to a government, such as Burma's, that
stifles democracy and brutally suppresses human rights, that is not
interference. That is recognizing and standing up for the clearly expressed
will of the Burmese people,' she said.

Albright said the keen interest that the U.S. and Japan have shown in
seeing peace restored in Cambodia similarly does not constitute a form of
unwarranted outside intervention.

'The question we must ask is what do we mean by interference in this age of
interdependence,' she said.

'Clearly, when one country imposes its will on another, that is
intervention. But when Japan and the United States work together to help a
nation overcome civil war and find the path to true democracy, as we are
trying to do in Cambodia, we are not imposing -- we are helping a
long-suffering people to realize its hopes.'

She said that responding to the challenges of the current era 'will require
us to talk at times about matters that have historically been seen as the
internal affairs of other nations. Understandably, there is much
sensitivity about this.'

Japan and China are the first and second stops on a weeklong tour of
Northeast Asia that will also take Albright to South Korea and Mongolia.

**************************************************************** BURMA
PEACE FOUNDATION (ANALYSIS): DSIF TRIUMPHS IN GENEVA
26 April, 1998

DSIF STRATEGY

Since Burma joined ASEAN last year, the junta's most effective institution,
its Department of Shooting Itself in the Foot (DSIF) has stepped up its
vigorous and successful campaign to alienate the neighbours, increase
Burma's status as a pariah State and thus its international isolation. [I
leave it to the professionals to undertake the psycho-political analysis of
these events, but I would not be surprised if they were to find a high
degree of institutional sado-masochism at play (1)].   

Means employed include the renewed cross-border attacks into Thailand by
the DKBA (Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, a militia aligned with the ruling
State Peace and Development Council - SPDC - as the Burmese junta now calls
itself). These attacks are specifically designed to embarrass Thailand's
military and political leaders. Another DSIF ploy has been to unilaterally
block cross-border trade, causing economic damage to China and Thailand.
Other successes have been the continuation of massive exports of heroin and
AIDS and the continued flow of refugees into neighbouring countries. In an
effort to further irritate the international community, the DSIF has
continued to refuse access by the UN's Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, and
continues its harassment of the NLD (National League for Democracy the
party that won a landslide victory in the 1990 elections and is still
waiting for the junta to transfer power), including the recent sentencing
of elected NLD representative Daw San San to 25 years imprisonment for
being interviewed by the international media. Other tactics have been
atrocities against the ethnic minorities, including the massive forced
relocations in Shan State and a degree of forced labour which has caused
the ILO (International Labour Organisation) to activate its most severe
measure, a quasi-judicial Commission of Inquiry on Forced Labour in Myanmar
(only the tenth since the ILO was founded in 1919). The Commission of
Inquiry is expected to report in July or August.  

 THE COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

These devices have succeeded in their aim of further isolating the junta.
The extent of this achievement was seen on 21 April when the UN Commission
on Human Rights (CHR) meeting in Geneva adopted a resolution on the
"Situation of human rights in Myanmar" which was stronger by several
degrees than any of the previous years' resolutions. 

I have been watching Burma at the CHR from the first resolution in 1989,
through its two years under the Confidential Procedure (1503), to the
annual public resolutions adopted from 1992 onwards. For the past five
years or so, the drafting process has worked something like this: 

A mechanic from the Foreign Ministry of the drafting government -- since it
is a European Union (EU) resolution this would normally be the EU
Presidency, though France was entrusted with the job from 89 to 96 -- goes
down into the basement, takes last year's CHR and General Assembly (GA)
resolutions off the shelf, puts them on the bench, splices them together so
that any new language coming in at the GA is incorporated in the new CHR
draft (it doesn't quite work vice versa), hunts around for any "good" or
"bad" things that have happened over the past year to insert, does a bit of
trimming and consolidating to get the draft down to size, passes it round
the office with the sandwiches, and sends it out to  the other EU members,
who add their comments, some of which are then incorporated into a 2nd
draft. (Before doing the first splice, the mechanic may have flipped
through a few piles of stuff which various governments, NGOs and others
have sent in. An important input is the report of the Special Rapporteur on
Myanmar. Recommendations by the Special Rapporteur frequently find their
way into the resolution.)

The EU diplomats at the Commission discuss the draft and prepare another
text which goes to potential co-sponsors (e.g. USA, Canada, Australia,
Eastern Europe and South American countries). After further input from
them, a new draft is normally circulated to the "opposition" i.e. the
Japanese, the ASEANS, SPDC, etc., who try and water it down, cut out the
politically strategic language, and add new "good" things to balance the
new "bad" paragraphs. During all this time, the representatives of the
Burmese democracy movement who come to Geneva for this purpose, are
watching the process, and along with NGOs make modest suggestions for
improvement/ strengthening of the text. 

But this year it didn't happen like this. This year, Burma's usual allies
were silent. There was almost no objection to the new, strong language
which had found its way into the draft. Hardly any watering down. When I
saw the text, I was amazed that it could achieve consensus. But it did.
Though many factors were at play, including the fact that Indonesia was
busy doing deals on an East Timor text and  ASEAN as a whole had its mind
on financial matters, the main accolade for this notable achievement must
be accorded to DSIF.  

Well done, Well done, Well done.
__________________

(1) On the other hand, as a short footnote, I should add that it is
possible to see DSIF's achievements as rational. For instance, the
reluctance of the junta to abandon its grip on the rickety State Economic
Enterprises and the priority it gives to military control over virtually
everything, including rice farming, education and the sending of faxes, are
factors in destabilising the economy and discouraging international aid or
investment which far outweigh any economic sanctions imposed or
contemplated. To those skeptics who would stress the irrationality of such
a policy, I would point out that keeping the country poor, isolated and
fragmented makes perfect sense once one accepts the premise that this is
the only situation in which the junta can continue to stay in power, and
that staying in power is the point. DSIF, far from being an aberration, is
thus pursuing the central policy goals of the Burmese leadership. Some
people might even see this approach as a heroic resistance to globalisation
and the grip of transnational corporations. Let us not forget that shooting
oneself in the foot has the personally rational goal of avoiding worse
injuries or death in battle].

****************************************************************

LOS ANGELES TIMES (OP-ED): SAY 'NO' TO THE MILITARY REGIME IN BURMA
29 April, 1998
By Betty Williams

* The City Council can send the oppressors a message by voting to end ties
to firms that invest in the former Burma.

The City of Los Angeles has the opportunity to join a growing list of local
and state governments throughout the United States that are refusing to do
business with corporations investing in Burma (renamed  Myanmar by the
military regime).  The issue is before a City Council committee. The
decision of companies like Unocal to continue doing business in Myanmar
gives huge moral and financial backing to the illegal military regime by
supporting with their dollars, and yours if you are a Unocal  customer, the
terrible atrocities being carried out routinely against  the Burmese people.

Whenever I see any advance in the cause of freedom and justice my joy is
mixed with sorrow and fear for my friend and fellow Nobel Peace laureate,
Aung San Suu Kyi, and the captive people of her country.    Suu Kyi is the
leader of Myanmar's National League of Democracy, which won 82% of the
legislative seats in a fair election in 1990.   And yet, her party was
never allowed to take office, and she has remained under virtual house
arrest ever since (even though she was ostensibly released from formal
house arrest in 1995).

I have seen with my own eyes the terrible treatment of the Burmese people
at the hands of the brutal military regime.   In 1993, I, along with
several fellow Nobel Peace laureates, attempted to get into Myanmar to
protest the incarceration of Suu Kyi and to see firsthand the conditions of
the people.  But the military regime would not allow us in.  We remained in
Thailand and talked with some of the thousands of refugees.

There are so many stories.  I will relate only one from personal
experience.   Sitting there on the dirt floor of a bamboo hut, recording
the testimonies of two beautiful young sisters seemed unreal.  Yet it was
very real.

They told me how their parents had been forced to dig their own graves and
had then been shot by soldiers.  These precious children were then forced
into virtual slavery.

During the day, soldiers used the girls and other children as porters,
forcing them to carry heavy machinery, including weapons and shells.  They
were used as human minesweepers.   Sometimes they would get a little food,
but only sometimes.   When they dropped from exhaustion, they were kicked.
If they didn't get up, they were shot in the head. Those who survived the
days still had to get through the hellish nights.  Soldiers would drag them
out of their huts, naked.  They would tie them to trees.  Then one by one,
they would systematically rape them.  But they were to suffer worse, much
worse.   Frequently, the soldiers urinated on them.  Sometimes, they would
place their bayonets into fires and place them inside the girls' vaginas.

As these children related their suffering, I shuddered.  "Would you
recognize any of the soldiers who did these terrible things to you?" I asked.

"No," the older sister answered softly.  "I never looked at their faces."

"What about you?"  The other child looked at me with huge dark eyes.  

"Only the first one," she said, as tears ran down her cheeks.  "I will
never forget the first one."

We sat together, weeping.  For just a little while they were my daughters.

That was four years ago.  God knows what happened to those innocent girls.
As unbelievable as it seems, things are no better in Myanmar now then they
were then.

I can only pray that the people of Los Angeles and their elected officials
will join me in standing up for the people of Myanmar.   Say  "no" to the
monsters, and to anyone who does business with them.

Betty Williams, a 1976 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, is the founder and
president of World Centers of Compassion for Children, based in Gulf
Breeze, Florida.

****************************************************************

NEWSWEEK: THE LADY AND THE NOOSE
30 April, 1998
By Tony Emerson

Tightening the pressure on Aung San Suu Kyi

The checkpoint outside the home of Burma's opposition leader Aung San Suu
Kyi looks like a police convention. There are military intelligence agents
in sunglasses and sarongs. There are riot cops in brown, the Army in green,
immigration agents and others in various shades of khaki -- even traffic
cops in starched white shirts. They wave a carload of foreign journalists
to the side of the road, where the other agents surround us and take
close-up photos of everyone. Then they rifle through our passports and
return them with a brusque, "You can go." After a moment of confusion, we
realize they mean "You can go away."

Every faction in the ruling junta keeps a close eye on Aung San Suu Kyi.
After she won a 1990 election that should have made her Burma's national
leader, the military placed her under armed guard in her family home on
Inya Lake. Though she supposedly was released from house arrest in 1995,
her guardians keep watch from the roadways, the house across the street and
the island in the center of the lake (to block boats and swimmers). The
checkpoints have become a barometer of the junta's nervousness -- bristling
with barbed wire when the junta fears a resurgence of pro-democracy protests. 

We arrive on a day when the checkpoint consists of two red stop signs. "She
is under virtual house arrest," says a senior member of her National League
for Democracy. "She has been besieged."

Now there are signs that the junta is "tightening the noose," says a top
diplomat in Rangoon. So far the generals have not dared lay a hand on "the
Lady," as she is universally known in Burma. She is still protected by her
popularity and international fame as the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner. But
her name does not protect her followers. In early April the regime detained
and interrogated two leading members of the NLD's central executive
committee for the first time. 

There are even rumors that the regime is installing Western style toilets
in a special house inside the walls of Insein Prison, preparing for the
possible detention of the Oxford-educated Suu Kyi herself.

Diplomats believe the crackdown may be the work of "the Old Man," the aging
dictator Ne Win, supposedly retired in his mansion across Inya Lake from
Suu Kyi. In November, Ne Win's proteges changed the name of the junta from
the State Law and Order Restoration Council, or SLORC, to the
less-ridiculous-sounding State Peace and Development Council. At the same
time, the junta trimmed down its membership and renewed pressure on the NLD. 

"Perhaps the authorities do intend to step up the repression. Such things
no longer surprise me," Aung San Suu Kyi tells us in a hand-written answer
to questions smuggled into her crumbling compound. "Only those who want to
believe there has been progress in Burma would be surprised."

Why tighten the screws now? The junta has reason to fear the return of
hyperinflation, which was the real trigger of 1988 protests that gave rise
to Aung San Suu Kyi's movement. The price of rice has doubled since last
year and could revive a depleted opposition movement. The other concern: an
emerging alliance between ethnic minority armies in the border areas of
Burma and the ethnic Burmese students and workers in Rangoon.

Meanwhile, all the generals maintain their watch on the Lady. We are told
by diplomats that our approach was probably blocked by hard-liners under
junta chairman Maung Aye. They oppose political talks with Aung San Suu
Kyi, whom they accuse of creating a "personality cult." Intriguingly,
however, another leadership faction asks us to "be patient." That raises
the hope that, someday, there may come a chance to loosen the noose.

****************************************************************

UNITED NATIONS COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS:  FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION (BURMA)
11 April, 1998

EXTRACTS ON BURMA FROM THE 1998 REPORT OF THE SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON FREEDOM
OF EXPRESSION

Economic and Social Council
Distr. GENERAL  E/CN.4/1998/40 
28 January 1998
Original: ENGLISH

COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Fifty-fourth session
Item 8 of the provisional agenda 

QUESTION OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF ALL PERSONS SUBJECTED TO  ANY FORM OF
DETENTION OR IMPRISONMENT 

Promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression 

Report of the Special Rapporteur, Mr. Abid Hussain, submitted  pursuant to
Commission on Human Rights resolution 1997/26 

12. The Special Rapporteur views with concern measures taken by Governments
to impede the free flow of information. Of particular concern are the
actions by Governments which provide for extremely harsh punitive measures
against groups and individuals seeking to benefit from new information
technologies. In this regard, the Special Rapporteur recalls information in
the report to the fifty-third session of the Commission by the Special
Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar (E/CN.4/1997/64,
para. 18) according to which: 

"the Computer Science Development Law of 27 September 1996 makes the
unauthorized import, possession, and use of certain types of computer
equipment, for example computers with networking capability, punishable
with sentences of 7 to 15 years' in prison and/or a fine. A 'Myanmar
Computer Science Council' will be established to approve the type of
equipment to be restricted. According to the Government-controlled
newspaper New Light of Myanmar (NLM), the punishment is prescribed for
anyone setting up links with a computer network without permission or who
uses computer networks or information technology for undermining State
security, law and order, national unity, the national economy or national
culture or who obtains or transmits State secrets. Members of unauthorized
computer clubs may, according to reports, be sentenced to prison terms of a
minimum of three years. A punishment of 5 to 10 years' imprisonment is
prescribed for anyone who imports or exports computer software or
information banned by the Myanmar Computer Science Council." 

****************************************************************

UNITED NATIONS COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS: RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE (BURMA)
11 April, 1998

EXTRACTS ON BURMA FROM THE 1998 REPORT OF THE SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON
RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE

Economic and Social Council
Distr. GENERAL  E/CN.4/1998/6 
22 January 1998
ENGLISH  Original: FRENCH

COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Fifty-fourth session
Agenda item 18 

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE DECLARATION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF
INTOLERANCE AND OF DISCRIMINATION BASED ON RELIGION OR BELIEF 

Report submitted by Mr. Abdelfattah Amor, Special Rapporteur, in accordance
with Commission on Human Rights resolution 1996/23 

58. The first category concerns violations of the principle of
non-discrimination in the matters of religion and belief. It involves
allegations concerning discriminatory policies and/or legislation in the
field of religion and belief.  

(a) In Myanmar, Christians in the state of Chin are alleged to be victims
of a discriminatory policy; 

62. The freedom to change one's religion is also being violated: 

(f) In Myanmar, there are reports that the army has tried to conduct
campaigns to convert Christians in the State of Chin to Buddhism. In one
monastery, children are said to have been forced to repeat Buddhist prayers
every day and some parents are said to have been paid sums of money in
exchange. 

63. The fourth category concerns violations of the freedom to manifest
one's religion or belief: 

(a) In Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, China, Mozambique, Myanmar,
Nigeria, the Russian Federation, Turkey and Uzbekistan, there are
allegations that the authorities have imposed controls on, and/or
interfered illegally with, the religious activities of all or certain
religious groups and communities; 

64. The fifth category concerns violations of the freedom to dispose of
religious property: 

 ... in Myanmar construction of a church was stopped by the authorities
despite the fact that a building permit had been obtained...

****************************************************************