Mizzima: Junta orders police force

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Junta orders police force to annihilate NLD, said Burmese dissidents

Bangkok, May 19, 2000
Mizzima News Group

Burmese dissidents said the country's military rulers have instructed
the entire police force in Burma to use any possible means to annihilate
the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) by end of this year.

Government's Home Minister Colonel Tin Hlaing and Chief of Police Forces
Colonel Soe Win instructed all the senior police officers and all the
officials under the Home Ministry to treat the NLD party as enemy and
annihilate it by December 2000, the Thailand-based All Burma Students
Democratic Front said in a statement dated May 17.

The instruction was reportedly made during a meeting of Home Ministry
officials held in Rangoon on April 20.

The group also said the government has threatened all civil servants to
be trustworthy and dutiful to the regime as the salaries of civil
servants have increased from April this year.

Citing the recent arrests government has made against the NLD party
members as "evidence", the exiled student group accused the government
of systematically implementing its plot to destroy the NLD.

It said 36 NLD members from Rangoon have been so far arrested since
April 12 and a number of NLD offices throughout the country are being
forced to shut down by the authorities. On May 10, twenty-five NLD
members were arrested for attending a NLD meeting in Taungdwingyi
Township, about 490 km north of Rangoon.

Government has confirmed on Thursday that it has jailed seven NLD
members to seven years each under the Emergency Provision Act. It also
jailed U Than Lwin, NLD Member of Parliament for nine years for making
subversive speeches in his constituency.

The NLD led by Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi won 392 of the 485
parliamentary seats in the election held in May 27, 1990 but the
military never honored the result.