SLORC's crackdwon continues

[dvb@xxxxx]

28Sep96 BURMA: BURMA TROOPS INTENSIFY PRESSURE ON ACTIVISTS. 12:11 GMT  

By Deborah Charles
RANGOON, Sept 28 (Reuter) - Burma's military rulers prevented Nobel peace
laureate Aung San Suu Kyi making a speech on Saturday as troops arrested
several democracy supporters at checkpoints set up to stop people reaching
the opposition leader's home.
Heavily armed security police and military intelligence officers were
deployed on several blocks of University Avenue for the second day to stop a
congress of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party from taking
place.
A Reuter photographer saw about 20 people sitting in a military truck with
their heads down. They had refused police requests to leave the intersection
leading to Suu Kyi's house.
Police refused to comment on the arrests.
The three-day NLD meeting, due to start on Friday, was called to celebrate
the party's eighth anniversary. But the ruling State Law and Order
Restoration Council (SLORC) decided to block the meeting because it
threatened national stability, a government official told Reuters.
The SLORC ordered the detention of 109 activists due to attend the meeting.
The official said they were being held in local guest houses for questioning
and would be released when the situation calmed down.
Suu Kyi has been seen walking down University Avenue but no one has heard
from her since the congress was blockaded early on Friday.
Repeated attempts to reach Suu Kyi by telephone failed, leading to
speculation her phone line had been cut as it was during her six years of
house arrest that ended in July 1995.
Many Rangoon residents had clearly not heard of the blockade and hundreds
came to attend her regular weekly speech on Saturday afternoon.
Police told Reuters the barriers would stay in place at least through Sunday.
Weekend speeches are the only forum for Suu Kyi to get her message out. The
government has banned distribution of leaflets or anything deemed
threatening to national stability.
The NLD, born in 1988 amid a wave of unprecedented demonstrations by people
opposed to military rule, won a landlside victory in a 1990 election which
was never recognised by the SLORC.
Suu Kyi, daughter of Burma's revered independence leader, Aung San, was
under house arrest at the time. The party congress was to have been the
first time Suu Kyi would meet the elected representatives of the NLD as a group.
In May, the goverment thwarted an attempt to hold a similar congress and
detained more than 260 NLD delegates. Most were later released but some were
charged and jailed.
The SLORC has also accused foreign governments, especially the United
States, of helping the NLD organise the party meeting to undermine the
country's peace and stability.
In Washington U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Glyn Davies dismissed
the charge as "bogus".
"Aung San Suu Kyi is a strong figure in the democracy movement and she makes
the calls about what happens in the NLD. She doesn't need advice from us."  
(c) Reuters Limited 1996
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