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SCMP : Junta vows to try 18 foreign



South China Morning Post
Tuesday  August 11  1998
Junta vows to try 18 foreign activists on criminal charges 

<Picture>

Secret talks: leading democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi prepares for an
interview at a friend's house where she met secretly with a group of
foreign journalists. Agence France-Presse photo 

WILLIAM BARNES and Agencies in Rangoon 
Eighteen foreign pro-democracy activists detained for handing out
anti-government leaflets will be tried on criminal charges, the military
regime said yesterday.

Questioning of the 18 had shown their actions on Sunday were premeditated,
the junta said.

"Action will be taken against them according to the law. They will be
charged and tried," it said.

The Government displayed the leaflets, which urged Burma's people to
remember a nationwide uprising against military rule 10 years ago and to
keep struggling, at a news conference where the activists were accused of
trying to incite unrest.

Those detained comprise six US citizens from the Free Burma Coalition and
three Malaysians, three Indonesians, three Thais, two Philippine nationals,
and an Australian from similar groups opposed to the Government.

Junta officials told diplomats that the detainees were "being treated
humanely", but no envoys had yet been allowed to visit their nationals, a
diplomat said.

A British-Australian national was freed on Thursday three months into a
five-year prison term for handing out leaflets on behalf of a rebel group.

Asked whether that case could serve as a guide, spokesman
Lieutenant-Colonel Hla Min said: "We need to discourage these groups."

Reporters were shown front-and-back photographs of the detainees taken in
detention, wearing T-shirts urging people to remember 8-8-88, as the
uprising of August 8, 1988 is known.

The junta accused foreign pro-democracy groups of sending "saboteurs and
sacrificial lambs" to disturb the "peace, tranquillity and stability" of
Burma.

It said foreign governments had been misled by these critics into thinking
"spontaneous social unrest is imminent and that the whole country is on the
verge of explosion".

In Manila, Philippine Foreign Minister Domingo Siazon said his ambassador
had met junta First Secretary Lieutenant-General Khin Nyunt. Negotiations
for the safety and release of the Filipinos was under way, Mr Siazon said.


?The National League for Democracy yesterday described the regime's
stepped-up security around leader Aung San Suu Kyi's compound as "amounting
to house arrest", and vowed to sue the authorities for breaking the law on
public access to roads.