FREE MAWDSLEY NOW!!! Solidarity

[dawnstar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: FREE  MAWDSLEY NOW!!!   Solidarity Now!!! AP-Brit Activist

Sentenced in Myanmar
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FREE  MAWDSLEY NOW!!!

Are the Brits going to start a solidarity freedom campaign, with Amnesty
International, to get this guy out of prison? Or are they going to let
him take all the heat and just, slowly rot away? 


He put his neck out, at risk of his life. And now he's paying the price.
The generals want to make an example out of him. Well, all those
highspirited western activists deported last year, where are they now? 

There should be an international campaign, full time, to high-light this
atrocious and unacceptable treatment of a western humanitarian. Anything
less is simply grotesquely unpardonable. 

Lets get some consensus on this, and lets get it now.Don't let the junta
use him as another bargaining chip here or there. Don't let them trade
his life away. 

It could have been you, or me. What's next, a firing squad? Or just a
slow, diseased, debilitating decay, madness and death.

This is a test for everyone. While you are in a comfortable, secure,
cultured environment, what do you James Mawdsley he is doing right now?
What do you think he is thinking?  

He is one of us, you and me. He is a brother to the Burmese. He put his
life out on the line. Its time to get him out, and make an international
campaign out of it, until the generals can't stand it anymore!!!

In solidarity, 

dawn star 
paris, 
euroburmanet


> Thursday September 2 7:13 AM ET
> 
> Brit Activist Sentenced in Myanmar
> 
> YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - A British activist was sentenced to 17 years in
> prison after trying to smuggle anti-government literature into Myanmar, the
> country's military regime said today.
> 
> James Rupert Russell Mawdsley, 26, was arrested Tuesday after crossing into
> Myanmar at Tachilek, a trading town on the border with Thailand. It was his
> third arrest in two years for making a personal bid to rally support against
> the government.
> 
> Anti-government activists are calling for a mass uprising Sept. 9, or
> 9-9-99, a date seen as auspicious in this numerology obsessed country. The
> government has acknowledged arresting nearly 40 people. Opposition groups
> say the figure is much higher. Mawdsley is the only foreigner.
> 
> A government spokesman, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said a
> five-year sentence imposed against Mawdsley last year for illegal entry,
> then suspended when he was freed following three months in Yangon's
> notorious Insein Prison, had been reinstated.
> 
> Mawdsley was convicted of the same offense in a summary trial Wednesday in
> Tachilek and received another five years, plus seven more for violating a
> publications act.
> 
> ``The government of Myanmar deeply regrets having to take such actions
> against Mr. James Mawdsley,'' the government spokesman said in a fax to news
> agencies in Thailand.
> 
> ``But his repeated breach of the same law and conditions agreed upon makes
> it difficult for the government to show leniency this time ... ''
> 
> Mawdsley also holds Australian citizenship. Both the British and Australian
> embassies are seeking consular access. He was being held in Keng Tung, a
> remote northeastern city.
> 
> In London, Mawdsley's father said he was extremely worried.
> 
> Myanmar's state-controlled press has described Mawdsley as a ``mercenary
> terrorist.''
> 
> The pamphlets he carried into Myanmar, formerly Burma, urged soldiers and
> civil servants to disobey orders and work for democracy. It also appealed to
> the regime to free all political prisoners and reopen the universities,
> closed since protests in 1996.
> 
> There has been little sign that Myanmar's people are ready to follow urgings
> by dissidents, mostly in exile in Thailand, and rise up next week. The
> military killed thousands during failed street protests in 1988.
> 
> The military, which has ruled Myanmar since 1962, has been condemned by many
> human rights organizations and Western governments for human rights abuses
> and suppressing the pro-democracy movement led by Nobel Peace laureate Aung
> San Suu Kyi.
> 
> Mawdsley, who says he has drawn inspiration for nonviolent struggle from Suu
> Kyi and Indian resistance hero Mahatma Gandhi, was arrested in September
> 1997 after chaining himself to a fence in Yangon and shouting pro-democracy
> slogans. He was immediately deported.
> 
> In April 1998, he was captured in the southern town of Moulmein while
> distributing pamphlets. After three months in solitary confinement in
> Insein, he was released on condition he never return.