AFP-Myanmar junta officials quiz fo

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Myanmar junta officials quiz foreigners on media links

Thu 20 Aug 98 - 08:21 GMT 

BANGKOK, Aug 20 (AFP) - Myanmar embassy officials here were Thursday
quizzing foreign applicants for tourist visas about possible links with the
media and forcing some to sign declarations they were not journalists,
applicants and other sources said.

"They are telling people they know they are journalists, asking all sorts
of questions and making them sign these documents if they want to get
visas," said one Bangkok executive whose associate was attempting to travel
to Myanmar.

One applicant said they had been told by embassy officials that they knew
they were a journalist because they had been seen on television.

Foreign diplomats in Yangon said scores of foreign journalists had
descended on the city amid escalating political tensions, with all but a
few arriving on tourist visas. Journalists who have applied for official
visas in recent weeks have been refused.

Some journalists had also been briefly detained in Yangon and forced to
sign documents saying they did not work for news organisations, the
diplomats added.

The junta has expelled two foreign journalists this week, saying the pair
had broken the law by declaring themselves as tourists.

"Most countries have laws controlling foreign journalists," a junta
official told AFP Wednesday. "Why shouldn't we?"

Most Asian countries, along with many elsewhere in the world, require
journalists to obtain appropriate visas. However, the rules are often
flouted and foreign journalists are regularly detained around the globe for
immigration offences.

The international journalists rights group Reporters Sans Frontieres said
French national Romain Franklin, employed by the daily Liberation, was
expelled from Yangon on August 17, while Italian freelancer Maurizio
Giouliano was deported on the same date.

Myanmar maintains tight controls over foreign journalists and they must
seek official visas in advance.

But junta officials said the journalists currently visiting Yangon on
tourist visas would be ignored if they were discreet and did not threaten
security.

"We know they are here," one official told AFP.

"They can come once, they can come twice but after that they won't come
back again."

Foreign diplomats also said discretion was the key, adding some foreign
journalists were operating too openly in what remains an isolated and
tightly monitored society.