Crackdown to dampen 10th anniversar

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Crackdown to dampen 10th anniversary of Myanmar opposition party

Sat 26 Sep 98 - 07:23 GMT 

BANGKOK, Sept 26 (AFP) - Myanmar opposition party the National League for
Democracy (NLD) will hold a low-key 10th anniversary service Sunday, the mood
dampened by detentions of hundreds of its members since May,diplomats said.

Unlike previous years, foreign envoys in the Myanmar capital of Yangon said
they had not been invited to the NLD celebration.

"It's just going to be a low-key thing with some form of ceremony and some
monks," one diplomat told AFP.

"We have not been invited on this occasion, which is indicative of what scale
of ceremony it's going to be."

Diplomats said it was possible the occasion would be used to further the NLD's
political agenda, including its demand that the junta allow the parliament
elected in 1990 to convene for the first time.

The NLD said last week that 200 of its MPs and 712 party members and other
supporters had been arrested since the demand was made in May.

Other opposition groups including the Thailand-based exiled government have
said it is the harshest crackdown on dissidents since the military's brutal
supression of student demonstrations in 1988.

"Many of their supporters and MPs have been detained, so it's unclear how many
people will turn up (to the anniversary ceremony)," one envoy said.

The NLD, founded shortly after the junta crushed a nascent student movement
and imposed martial law, proved an instant threat to the generals who had
ruled Myanmar, or Burma as it was known, in one form or another since 1962.

Leaders Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of national independence hero Aung San, and
ex-defence minister Tin Oo, who had been jailed for four years in 1976 for
failing to report an assassination plot against former dictator Ne Win,quickly
began attracting large crowds at rallies throughout the country.

The junta reacted by placing them both under house arrest in July 1989, less
than a year after Aung San Suu Kyi made her maiden political speech calling
for democratic reform and the respect of human rights. Tin Oo was
subsequently given three years with hard labour.

Despite these setbacks, the NLD still managed to win 392 of the 485 seats
available in the 1990 election.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the party's general secretary, was released from house
arrest in 1995, but her movements are still strictly controlled.

She recently made several unsuccessful attempts to meet party leaders in
provincial offices, only to end up waiting for days on the roadside as
soldiers blocked her on the outskirts of Yangon.

The NLD's latest move was the setting up of a parliamentary committee on
September 16, which it claims has the support of more than half the MPs
elected in 1990 to act as a de-facto parliament.

Aung San Suu Kyi recently called on foreign support for the plan to convene
parliament and has urged the international community to maintain sanctions
against Yangon.

Last week the junta said seven NLD members had been released from detention
after weeks of what they called an exchange of views. More would be allowed to
go home in the coming weeks, officials said.

An article in the state-run New Light of Myanmar journal on Saturday accused
the NLD of "pulling stunts aimed at unrest and chaos."

                                                                          ©AFP
1998

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