SUU KYI SUBJECTED TO HIGHWAY HARASS

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 BURMA

Suu Kyi subjected to highway harassment
Date: 10/07/98


By ALEX SPILLIUS in Bangkok

The Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has twice been blocked by
police on a country road in her most defiant acts against the military junta
for two years.

As night fell on Wednesday, activists in Bangkok said Ms Suu Kyi had been
obstructed 65 kilometres along the highway between Rangoon and Prome and had
yet to return to the capital.

On Tuesday, she was obstructed 70 kilometres along the same road and refused
to turn around until early Wednesday, spending the night in her car with
members of her opposition party during a stand-off with police.

Since Ms Suu Kyi was released from house arrest in 1995, even her
opportunities to move around the capital have been limited. She is barred
from making speeches or from other public political activities.

The regime described her forays as attempts to "create unnecessary and
unwanted confusion, confrontation and collision" and warned of a "head-on
collision" with opposition groups.

Two years of stalemate have followed her first attempt to leave Rangoon, but
the 53-year-old, Oxford-educated Nobel Peace Prize winner has recently
launched a new challenge to the regime, setting a deadline of August 21 for
the generals to convene the 1990 Parliament.

Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won elections that year by a
landslide, but the generals have never allowed Parliament to meet. Following
her demand, 395 NLD members of parliament have been ordered to report twice
a day to the police under a 1951 law designed to restrict habitual
criminals. Opposition groups have said 44 were detained last week for
refusing the order.

- The Telegraph, London