Information Request, IHT story, FRE

[cd@xxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: Re: Information Request, IHT story, FREE MA THILDA !

For Burma readers, Strider, please post,

from IHT (International Herald Tribne), Letters to the Editor. 

FREE MA THIDA NOW ! ! !

Today readers are heartened and saddened to learn of the enduring 
suffering of Ma Thida, a 29-year-old physician, writer and political 
activist who was a campaign assistant to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and 
sentenced in October 1993, to 20 years' imprisonment.

Euro-Burmanet will e-mail the IHT from here in appreciation of their 
editorial will to publish the letter, and we encourage all readers to 
send email to their government representatives and burmese embassies to 
FREE Ma 
Thida today.

Also, if you know of medical humanitarian activist groups, send them this 
story, with your appeal that they pressure the Burmese Slorc rulers to 
release her today. We will contact the French office of Medecins sans 
Frontieres, and encourage that readers contact the MSF offices too, 
especially the Dutch office with the Burmese desk there.  

It is absolutely appalling, and  underlines the indifference to human 
life by Slorc's masters, that this doctor remain in prison, when she 
could be saving lives. 

A demand for her release would significantly multiply the human awareness 
factor for the thousands  already killed, or like her languishing in 
prison, and the hundreds of thousands of lives damaged by Slorc's 
irresponsible abuse of power, described daily in the world's press. 

Recent hostile remarks by Slorc rulers aimed at the " Big Powers ", the 
United Nations, and the World Bank, - all instrumental in development aid 
loans, attests to their weak-heartedness under pressure. Sooner or later, 
something has got to break.

If any of you  reading this now have any information on Ma THIDA, please 
email Euro-Burmanet today. If you have a photo of her, we would like to 
put it on the net in a net campaign for her release. Please send it, 
snail or e-mail.

Remember you can send your letters direct by Email. Write directly to 
Walter Wells, News Editor.

Every late afternoon, at precisely 5 :30, some dozen odd  news editors 
crowd in a little closed room on the second floor in Neuilly, Paris 
France at the IHT headquarters and run down the news of the day that they 
have scrolled, edited for the night make-up edition. So if you have hot 
news, send it to them, to Walter. 

Any finance news should go directly to the Finance editor, who runs some 
60% of the paper's paper space. He has some four subeditors working with 
him. His name is Jonathan GAGE, and I know he would take kindly to any 
letters addressed to his attention.

Be sure to specify that the letter to go to someone's direct attention, 
because all these letters mail get sorted out by someone else. 

It always helps to specify a certain article in the IHT, NYTimes or 
Washington Post (remember, the IHT is part owned by NYT and WP. That way, 
you can tag it on to an IHT story, with the letter as follow up. 

As this letter shows, you do not always have to tag it to an IHT story !

This is not a plug for the IHT in anyway, but to get news out on Burma in 
an influential paper read around the world, & non-partisan when it comes 
to politics, though it is a distinctly american eye on world events. 
Nonetheless, and despite the frequently large advertising supplements by 
countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, you name it, they print it if its 
advertising country supplements) they have been quite good about covering 
Burma, and keeping it up front and dead center. Its actually quite a 
wacky group of expatriate editors hacking the news from the NYT, WP and 
the wires. Feedback is friendly, and gives a feeling of response you 
don't get from user-friendly computers, not exactly.

Send them a word of support and thank them - for Ma THIDA - for their 
report and frequent coverage of the democratic struggle in Burma. 

And if there are any writers out there with a story, it wouldn't hurt to 
submit something to Walter or John.

IHT
181, ave Charls e Gaulle
92521 Neuilly sur Seine
France
tel  33 1 41 43 93 00
fax 33 1 41 43 92 10
E mail : iht@xxxxxxx

Metta, 
Dawn Star
Euro-Burmanet
E-mail : cd@xxxxxxx

Burmanet
Euro-Burmanet
Free Burma Coalition
http://www-uvi.eunet.fr/
http://www-uvi.eunet.fr/asia/euro-burma/
http://www-uvi.eunet.fr/asia/euro-burma/nld/
http://www-uvi.eunet.fr/asia/euro-burma/total

Prisoners in Burma (letter by Cesar CHELALA, New York)

The recent death, reportedly under torture, of James Leander Nichols - 
who served as honorary consul for several Scandinavian countries - is 
just the latest of the Burmese military junta's challenges to supporters 
of democracy and human rights.

Among those still under arrest is Ma Thida, a 29-year-old physician, 
writer and political activist who was a campaign assistant to Daw Aung 
San Suu Kyi. In October 1993, Ma Thida was sentenced to 20 years' 
imprisonment for " endangering public tranquility, having contact with 
unlawful organizations and disturbing unlawful literature. " 

It is possible that Ma Thida was punished for being among several 
physicians who treated civilians duing th pro-democracy demonstrations of 
1988.

She is being kept at Insein Prison in Rangoon under conditions that 
Amnesty International says amount to cruel, inhuman and degrading 
treatment.

Burma's jails are inaccessible not only to human rights and humanitarian 
organizations, but, in many cases, to the families of the detainees as 
well. Since late 1989, more than 500,000 people have been forcibly moved 
from their homes to resettlement  towns by the military. In adddition, 
forced relocation and persecutions are responsible for the exodus of 
hundreds of thousands of people to nearby countries.

Following the latest wave of abuses by the military, several 
international companies are pulling out of Burma, indicating a more 
definite change in the international community's attitude toward the 
military junta.  I that resolve is maintained, it could signal that the 
time of the Burmese generals is over.