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"Junta says Suu Kyi is lying over jail inmates' transfer"

"The Asian Age" Newspaper
Date June 7, 1999

Rangoon, June 6: Burma's military rulers on Sunday denied what they
called an "appalling" claim by Ms Aung San Suu Kyi that hundreds of
prisoners had been transferred from a notorious jail before a Red Cross
visit.
The Opposition leaders said last week that imprisoned members of her
party had been banished to provincial jails before a pioneering visit by
delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross last month.
Without mentioning Ms Aung San Suu Kyi by name, a government statement
sent to an AFP condemned her comments as "counter-productive" for
prisoners and their families. The statement said it was "appalling but
unfortunate that irresponsible statements and groundless allegations
have been launched from certain quarters to attack and belittle the
cooperation between the Burmese government and the ICRC."
Red Cross delegates had been allowed into Insein prison in Rangoon
"purely on humanitarian grounds" as part of a joint effort to promote
better conditions, the statement said.
Many prisoners in Insein jail have emerged with grisly tales of
appalling conditions and said they were tortured or held in solitary
confinement.
Ms Aung San Suu Kyi said in an interview published in the financial
Times on Thursday that hundreds of prisoners had been shipped out of
Insein to provincial jails far from their families before the Red Cross
inspection on May 6.
She also criticized the ICRC for not consulting her before accepting a
government offers to visit Burma jails for the first time. "This created
tremendous hardship"; she was quoted as saying, adding that many
prisoners depended on family visits for food and medicines. "This kind
of transfer is a matter of life and death for our party members. The
ICRC said on Thursday that consulting Aung San Suu Kyi would have drawn
it into Burma's political battle.
A spokesman for the Geneva-based body said the government had given it
permission to visit all detention centers in the country after it opened
an office in the capital last October. Ms Suu Kyi's National League for
Democracy party won an overwhelming victory in Burma's 1990 elections
but the junta has refused to relinquish power and has imprisoned

hundreds of
party members.  (AFP)