Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi fails to g

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Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi fails to go beyond Rangoon again

UPI, Rangoon, 21 September 2000.Burmese opposition leader
Aung San Suu Kyi defied the ruling junta's ban on her travel outside
Rangoon Thursday by trying to take a train to Mandalay.

But like previous attempts to carry on her work outside the capital
for the National League for Democracy (NLD), her attempt was
blocked when soldiers shut down Rangoon's main train station.

Earlier in the day NLD vice chairman Tin Oo told a press
conference that he would accompany Suu Kyi on the train to
Mandalay and the two party leaders would meet with supporters
in northern Burma.

Suu Kyi departed from her lake-side home shortly before
4 p.m. local time, headed to the train station.

But witnesses at the station said military police had shut
down nearly all activity there and the train to Mandalay,
and all others, had been cancelled. Reporters were barred
from entering the station.

Military intelligence officers also detained about 100 of
Suu Kyi's supporters who had gathered at the train station to
see her off.

Earlier this week she had vowed to challenge the junta's
ban on her travel beyond Rangoon, saying she would make
more attempts to travel and would fight the ban in the Burmese
courts.

Suu Kyi's most recent attempt to leave Rangoon was on
Aug. 24, when she and 14 of her supporters were stopped
at a roadblock on the capital's outskirts. Refusing to turn back,
she remained in a standoff with military police for nine days
until she was finally forced to return home.

Suu Kyi, 55, daughter of independence leader Aung San,
has been leader of the NLD since 1988, when she led nationwide
pro-democracy demonstrations.

The NLD won a landslide victory in the country's only free
election in 1990, but the military refused to honor the outcome
and arrested or exiled most of the winning legislative candidates.

Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest from 1989 until 1995.
Since then she has been allowed to engage in some political
work but repeated attempts to leave Rangoon have been blocked
by military authorities.