Bangkok Post News (25/9/98)

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Huge rally denounces activists

Calls for removal of inside ' destructionists'

Some 20,000 Burmese state enterprise workers stage a demonstration
yesterday to call for the "removal" of the National League for Democracy
(NLD) opposition leaders, eye-witnesses said.
The well-organised, pro-government rally was staged at Thuwanna National
Gymnasium in Rangoon, drawing members of the Myanmar Industrialists
Association and the Myanmar Fishery Enterprise, two state-run organisations.
The groups called on Burma's military junta to maintain "the conditions of
peace and tranquility" and "the conditions of economic and living progress
of the people already achieved".
Speakers criticised the recent activities of NLD opposition party leaders,
such as Noble laureate Augh San Suu Kyi, and called for their "removal".
"Only when internal destructionists are removed, external hegemonists will
not be able to interfere in Myamar's (Buema's) internal affairs," Fishery
Enterprise general secretary Kyee Ngwe told the crowd.
"Removing them would be like freeing the moon from an eclipse," he added.
The pro-government rally came amid increasing tension between the
military's self-styled State Peace and Development Council and the NLD.
NLD leaders have promised to convene a people's parliament some time this
month, and recently set up a 10-member committee that has been mandated to
dstablish a new government to challenge the junta's rule.
The NLD won the country's 1990 general election with a landslide victory
but has been blocked from office by the military regime that come to power
in 1988, after a brutal crack-down on pro-democracy demonstrators.

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