[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index ][Thread Index ]

NEWS - Jailed Briton in one-week hu



Subject: NEWS - Jailed Briton in one-week hunger strike in Myanmar

Jailed Briton in one-week hunger strike in Myanmar

  
BANGKOK, Jan 7 (Reuters) - A British pro-democracy activist jailed for
17 years in Myanmar staged a week-long hunger strike before Christmas to
protest against the jailing of dissidents, activist and diplomatic
sources said on Friday. 

A British consular official visited 26-year-old James Mawdsley on
December 22, the last day of his hunger strike in jail in the
northeastern town of Kengtung. 

``He was on a hunger strike before Christmas,'' said a British diplomat
in Yangon. ``He's fine now. He'a lost some weight, but he wasn't ill.'' 

The All Burma Students' Democratic Front, a dissident exile group based
on the Thai-Myanmar border, said Mawdsley took only water during the
hunger strike. 

It said he staged the protest against the imprisonment of Min Ko Naign,
a student dissident who was one of the leaders of Myanmar's 1988
uprising for democracy. 

The ruling military took direct power that year by killing thousands to
crush nationwide protests and has since tried to stamp out dissent
through arrests and intimidation. 

Diplomats and dissidents say the authorities are holding hundreds of
political prisoners, including many members of the National League for
Democracy, which won Myanmar's last election in 1990 but has been
prevented from governing by the military. 

Mawdsley, a Briton from Lancashire who also holds an Australian
passport, was jailed after illegally entering Myanmar in September to
distribute pro-democracy leaflets. It was his third arrest for activism
in the country in two years. 

Last year, after release from 99 days in Yangon's notorious Insein Jail,
he reported being beaten with bamboo poles, having staves rolled down
his shins and being deprived of water. 

However his mother told Reuters last month after visiting him in late
November that he had not been tortured while serving this term. 

23:13 01-06-00