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Times on Rachel



Times (London)
September 19 1999	FAR EAST
©Goldwyn: 'Cared too much'
Jailed Burma protester 'had ties with radical campaigners'
Tom Walker


BURMA activists in London claimed yesterday that Rachel Goldwyn, the 
28-year-old British woman jailed last week by the Rangoon junta for singing 
a protest song, was linked with a group of around 40 radicals who had all 
planned to be arrested in Burma.
The activists said underground contacts in the country had warned against 
mass action, saying it would play into the hands of the military regime 
because the junta's propaganda blames foreign insurgents for internal 
unrest. Goldwyn apparently decided to go ahead anyway.
Said one Burmese source: "The tragedy of what's happening inside Burma 
should not be deflected by foreigners."
The imprisonment of two Britons in three weeks - first James Mawdsley, a 
former Bristol University student who was sentenced to 17 years, then 
Goldwyn, from Barnes, southwest London, who was jailed for seven - has 
exposed divisions among groups hoping to force change in Rangoon.
"It's become a soap opera," said John Jackson, of the Burma Action Group. 
"The stories shouldn't be about Rachel and James."
Nobody was interested in the 500 people who had been arrested in Burma in 
the past six weeks, he said.
Rachel's father Ed Goldwyn, a television producer, was anxious to 
distinguish her from radical groups of middle-class youngsters from America, 
Europe and Australia whose travel experiences in Asia encourage them to 
fight the oppression that they have witnessed.
"Rachel should not become the symbol of a political idea. It's a personal 
story," he said.
Friends of the family were also keen to emphasise the differences between 
her protest and that of Mawdsley who, at 26, is a veteran campaigner against 
the Rangoon generals. Burmese diplomatic sources have acknowledged that the 
cases are seen as separate.
Mawdsley's father, David, has circulated his latest accounts of being 
threatened with torture in jail, believing it is all-important to keep the 
case in the public eye. But for the moment both families appear wary of any 
joint campaign.
On Friday, after visiting Dr Kyaw Win, Burma's ambassador in London, Ed 
Goldwyn was optimistic that his daughter would be released early.
Hannah Gough, a close friend, has insisted Goldwyn's story is "not of a Che 
Guevara or a Joan of Arc, it is of a kind, ordinary girl who cared too 
much". She believes Goldwyn was angered by bickering between Burma action 
groups.
"Something must have short-circuited in her and she lost all sense of 
reality. The sacrifice is huge, brave and very misguided," Gough said.


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