NEWS - Myanmar Democracy Martyr Hon

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Subject: NEWS - Myanmar Democracy Martyr Honored

Myanmar Democracy Martyr Honored

 .c The Associated Press

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - Wrapped in black mourning attire, pro-democracy
leader Aung San Suu Kyi paid tribute to her father on the 52nd
anniversary of his assassination Monday while the military regime urged
her party to unseat her.

For the third straight Martyrs Day holiday, official newspapers balked
at publishing what had once been a traditional special page on the life
of Gen. Aung San, Suu Kyi's father and hero of Myanmar's independence
from Britain.

The official press - the only kind allowed in Myanmar - claimed that the
people ``loathe'' Aung San's daughter, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace
Prize, as a traitor. Newspapers urged her party, the National League of
Democracy, to drive her out of politics.

Martyrs Day commemorates the assassination of Aung San, six ministers
and two others who were machine-gunned during a Cabinet meeting July 19,
1947, in an attack orchestrated by a political rival and aided by
renegade British intelligence officers.

In the only event of the year in which Suu Kyi is allowed to take part
in official ceremonies, she arrived in a black sedan at the concrete
Martyrs Mausoleum at the foot of the capital Yangon's gilded Shwedagon
Pagoda.

Dressed in a traditional black longyi, or sarong, a white jacket and
black shawl, Suu Kyi, 54, bowed in front of her father's tomb and placed
three baskets of purple and white orchids there. She then knelt and paid
respects in the Buddhist tradition.

None of the top ruling generals of the ruling State Peace and
Development Council attended. Culture Minister Win Sein represented the
government.

Afterwards, some 400 supporters greeted Suu Kyi at her party
headquarters with chants and cheers. Tin Oo, the party vice chairman,
read a statement urging the military to engage the party in dialogue.

Under 37 years of military rule, Myanmar, also known as Burma, has gone
from being one of the richest countries in Southeast Asia to one of the
poorest. The regime crushes dissent, and thousands of dissidents are in
prison or otherwise detained.

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy overwhelmingly won 1990
elections, but the military never let the parliament meet.

She was freed from six years of house arrest in 1995, but has since made
no headway in her requests for a dialogue to put the country on a more

democratic course. The generals refuse to speak to her and denied her
English husband a visa to see her before he died in March.

The military, which respects her father as a hero, calls Suu Kyi a
traitor, saying her success in getting foreign nations to impose
economic sanctions to force change have retarded development.

AP-NY-07-19-99 0933EDT