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NEWS - Myanmar junta officials quiz



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.