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NEWS - Briton jailed in Myanmar for



Subject: NEWS - Briton jailed in Myanmar for 17 years

Briton jailed in Myanmar for 17 years

By David Brunnstrom

NOTE: 7 years for Printing and Publshing?  He Printed and Published them
outside of Burma.  Also his original 5 year sentence... he DID spend
about 3 months of that.
  
BANGKOK, Sept 2 (Reuters) - In its latest crackdown on pro-democracy
campaigners, Myanmar's military government has jailed for 17 years a
Briton arrested carrying anti-government leaflets. 

James Mawdsley, 26, from Lancashire, who also holds an Australian
passport, was arrested in the northeastern town of Tachilek bordering
Thailand on Tuesday. He was tried and sentenced there on Wednesday. 

The government said the sentence included a five-year term for illegal
entry imposed last year before he was deported, an additional five years
for the latest illegal entry, and seven years under a law governing
printing and publishing. 

A British embassy statement expressed displeasure. 

``We are unhappy with the way the case was handled and that we did not
have access to Mr Mawdsley before the trial took place. We are making
this clear to the Burmese government,'' it said. 

A diplomat in the Myanmar capital Yangon said on Thursday that about 20
students had been detained this week for staging a pro-democracy protest
in Yangon. 

The diplomat quoted an eyewitness as saying about two dozen students
took part in the protest outside the city's Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar's
holiest Buddhist shrine, on Tuesday. 

``We understand about 20 were picked up,'' said the diplomat, adding
they had shouted slogans supporting an uprising which dissidents have
called for ``four nines day'' -- September 9, 1999. 

On Wednesday, the National League for Democracy (NLD), Myanmar's main
opposition party, said the government had arrested 16 dissidents in the
city in connection with the movement. 

The diplomat said the students were not included in this figure. 

The NLD said nine of the 16 were league members and the remaining seven
from other pro-democracy groups. 

The government denied the arrest of the students but has not commented
on the NLD statement. 

The military has arrested at least several dozen dissidents in the past
month to prevent a repeat of the student-led pro-democracy uprising in
1988 in which thousands were killed. 

It says it has detained 36 people outside the capital, but dissident
groups in exile put the figure at more than 150. 

The NLD called on representatives of the International Committee of the
Red Cross, which earlier this year began visiting Myanmar prisons, to
look into the fate of those arrested and arrange for their families to
see them. 

Myanmar's military has been criticised worldwide for human rights abuses
since the 1988 uprising and ignoring the result of a 1990 election when
the NLD won by a landslide. 

The NLD estimates the authorities hold at least 1,000 political
prisoners at any given time. 

NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel peace prize winner, said in
a recent interview obtained by Reuters that 40-50 NLD members of
parliament were in detention, 10 of them in jail. 

Commenting on arrests in connection with the uprising call, she said:
``All these arrests were made, I'm sure, in ways that were totally
contrary to the laws of the land. 

``When the military intelligence personnel go around arresting people
they don't have warrants with them, they simply march into people's
homes and drag them away. 

``They are tried in camera, if they are tried at all. Quite often they
are simply tortured into making some kind of confession.'' 

The government denies holding political prisoners. 

07:59 09-02-99