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The BurmaNet News: June 1, 1998



------------------------ BurmaNet ------------------------
 "Appropriate Information Technologies, Practical Strategies"
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The BurmaNet News: June 1, 1998
Issue #1016

HEADLINES:
==========
BANGKOK POST: OPPOSITION MEETING ENDS 
ABSDF: BURMESE POLITICAL PRISONER KILLED FOLLOWING HUNGER STRIKE 
CHEWIT TONG SOO: INTERVIEW WITH SAO YORD SERK 
THE NATION: ETHNIC CLEANSING: RAPE AS A WEAPON OF WAR IN BURMA (EDITORIAL)  
SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST: CURRENTS 
GOVERNMENT OF CANADA: CALL FOR RESTORATION OF DEMOCRACY IN BURMA
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Bangkok Post: Opposition Meeting Ends 
29 May, 1998 

About 400 members of Burma's National League for Democracy opposition party
resumed a special gathering yesterday focusing on ways to speed up dialogue
with the ruling military junta, NLD sources said.

The second and final day of the gathering in the lakeside residence of NLD
leader Aung San Suu Kyi, which marks the eighth anniversary of the party's
landslide May 1990 election, went ahead with the junta's blessing.

The military never recognised the polls victory.

"We discussed a wide range of subjects, including political and social
problems, but mainly focused on how to seek a peaceful political situation
in Burma via dialogue," said a delegate.

On Wednesday, Mrs Sun Kyi addressed the gathering to praise the ruling
State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) for allowing the meeting, but
demanded it convene parliament and recognise her party's sweeping victory
in 1990 elections. She also sought dialogue with the military, saying it
could not be avoided to resolve a domestic political stalemate.

Yesterday, the atmosphere at the, gathering was relaxed without military
disturbance and some checkpoints at roads near Mrs Suu Kyi's home were
removed. 

****************************************************************

ABSDF: Burmese Political Prisoner Killed Following Hunger Striker
27 May, 1998 

A political prisoner in Burma has been killed after being beaten by prison
authorities following a hunger strike by political prisoners at the
Thayawaddy Prison, 200 kilometres north of Rangoon.

The prisoner, Aung Kyaw Moe was beaten and seriously injured on 23 May when
the prison authorities attempted to break up the hunger strike. Aung Kyaw
Moe, who is believed to be 29 years old, died in the prison hospital on the
day of the beating.

Aung Kyaw Moe was a student of Rangoon Institute of Technology (RIT) and
had been sentenced to 14 years imprisonment for his involvement in 1996
December student demonstrations.

On May 22, political prisoners in Thayawaddy Prison staged a hunger strike
to mark the 8th anniversary of the 1990 elections, in which the National
League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide victory which has never been
recognized by the military government.

The political prisoners made two demands: that ruling State Peace and
Development Council (SPDC) treat them as political prisoners and enter into
a dialogue with the NLD to solve country's problems peacefully.

However prison authorities, under instructions from the SPDC's Ministry of
Home Affairs, rejected their demands and warned the prisoners to stop their
hunger strike immediately. On 23 May 1998, the prison authorities cracked
down on the hunger strikers and eight political prisoners were beaten and
seriously injured.

Afterwards, the family members of all the political prisoners at Thayawaddy
Prison were not allowed to visit in an attempt by the authorities to
prevent information spreading about the incident.

Meanwhile, political prisoners at Thayet Prison in Magwe Division have also
staged a hunger strike. However, the detail of this strike are as yet
unknown. 

****************************************************************

Chwit Tong Soo: Interview With Sao Yord Suk 
2 May, 1998 

[BurmaNet Editor's Note: The following is a translation of an interview
published in the May 2-8 edition of the Thai weekly magazine "Chiwit Tong
Soo." The journalist who conducted the interview traveled for over 2 months
inside Shan State to meet Yord Serk, the leader of the Shan States Army
(South) - formerly the SURA.]

Q: Why are you leading an army to fight the Burmese?


A: I am a soldier that loves my country. I want the Shan and other ethnic
nationalities who are treated unfairly to be free from Burmese rule. We are
trying to build our country again. So I want to tell the world three
things: 1) Our army wants freedom for the Shan people. 2) We want the
international community to know that we, the Shan people, used to rule
ourselves. We had our own country. We want to rule ourselves without being
under the control of the Burmese. 3) We are fighting with the Burmese
because we have been unjustly oppressed and we want democracy. And we want
the help of the world.

Q:  Are you still using money from drugs to support your army?

A: We can answer straight away that our army, the SSA, is not involved in
drugs and is not selling drugs. We have a clear policy to eradicate drugs
from the Shan States. We will cooperate in every way to solve the problem.
But first we must get help to have real power and not be under the Burmese
government. If we are the government, we can solve the problem easily.

Q: How will you solve the problem?

A: When we have peace and autonomy, we will have democratic rule, since
there are not only Shans in the Shan States but also other ethnic
nationalities. Democracy is most suitable for the Shan States. And another
point is that the people in the Shan States don't have to rely on drugs to
prosper. We have many different natural resources: we are rich in
agricultural resources, gems, minerals. We could use the Chiang Tong
waterfall to produce electricity for the whole Shan States. We could not
only destroy the poppies, we could really uproot them and get rid of them
because we have so many other things to earn a living from apart from
drugs. And it is our policy to solve the drug problem once and for all.

Q: If you don't rely on money from drugs, how are you supplying yourselves?

A: We did not have to buy the weapons we are using. They are from the time
of the MTA. As for the money we are using, it comes partly from trading in
gems and logs, and partly from friends and sympathetic traders. But we have
a shortage of funds. So I'd like to make it clear through your magazine
that we'd like support from the outside world to help us achieve the aims
I've told you about. In particular we want help from Thailand and the UN.

Q: You've said you want to solve the problem of drugs, but recently the
United States named you in a list of people involved in drug trafficking.

A: It's a very one-sided accusation. The US has accused me of dealing in
drugs, but I have not seen any US officials come to visit me. They just go
to Burma and give money to help the Burmese. If anyone wants to accuse me
of being a drug kingpin, I am ready to prove my innocence. I'm willing to
go to the US, or anywhere in the world. But the US and the world must come
and look after my Shan people. I am willing to face anything, even being
hanged. Let the US come and meet me, with reporters and drug enforcement
officials. I am ready to take them to see the reality of the drug situation
in the Shan States. If anyone stays with me, they will know the truth. Once
they know, then even if they don't help me, at least they shouldn't give
money to the Burmese to kill the Shan people. People shouldn't just listen
to the side of the Burmese and then accuse me of being a drug trafficker.
Just think: the drug problem has been going on for decades. The Burmese
have received thousands of millions of dollars from the rest of the world,
but have drugs been eradicated? After Lo Hsing Han and Khun Sa, who is left
for the Burmese to blame except for me, since I'm opposing them? It's all a
political game. If people really want to solve the drug problem, they must
solve the political problem. Because the problems of drugs and politics are
interrelated.

Q: What do you think about Khun Sa?

A: Khun Sa is a drug dealer. If I met him, I would arrest him and send him
to the US to go on trial. He just used our national struggle as a front for
his drug business. Now Lo Hsing Han and he are just doing business and
sharing the profits with the Burmese.

Q: Since you knew Khun Sa was no good, why did you agree to work together
with him?

A: When Khun Sa joined with us, uniting his SUA with the SSA and SURA to
form the MTA, I was still working with Sao Korn Jerng (the former leader of
the SURA). I even questioned Sao Korn Jerng about why he was joining with
Khun Sa when he knew he was just a drug dealer. He replied that even though
he knew what Khun Sa was like, Khun Sa was also a Shan and they shouldn't
fight each other, but we should rely on Khun Sa's power and money to unite
the Shans to fight for the national cause, and at the same time try and
seek to reform Khun Sa himself. We even had a plan that if we couldn't
change Khu Sa, we should arrest him. But before we could carry out our
plan, Sao Korn Jerng died and Khun Sa surrendered to the Burmese. The only
thing left for us now is to take up arms and carry on the struggle.

Q: So you are ready to let the world come and solve the problem in the Shan
States?

A: Yes, we are ready to cooperate in every way. We have been ready to
cooperate for a long time, but the world has never bothered to look at us.
If you talk about the political problems in the Shan States, the people of
the world just look at the drug issue. They look at Khun Sa, and just think
of drugs. If the international community want to know the truth, they have
to come here and see the real situation. The Burmese are trying to cut us
off and not let any foreigners come in. You are lucky to be the first news
team to come deep into the Shan States and you have seen the most about our
real problems. If the world wants to get rid of opium, they have to help
the Shans and the other nationalities. Yes, the Shans grow opium, but the
traders are foreigners - they are Burmese and Chinese. The UN should come
in and study the real situation in the Shan States and not just see things
superficially. The UN should be aware of how much the Burmese are
oppressing the Shan people. They should come and give us training in
agriculture and crop substitution. They should let the Shans have the right
to govern themselves. If they come and help the Shans, the drug problem
will be solved in 10 years, the Shan people won't have to die and the whole
world will be happier. If they help the Burmese, the drug problem won't be
solved even in 50 years, the Shan and other nationalities will all die, and
the budget given to the Burmese will be wasted. It is not necessary to use
weapons to eradicate drugs - that is just like picking the leaves of the
plants, but not uprooting them.

Q: So you think your army can solve the problem?

A: Our SSA army has had a lot of experience. We are not going to let any
foreigners or Burmese come and trick us again. We will not let any drug
dealers come and interfere in our political struggle again. Our army is
against drugs. We want the UN to come and help look after our people. Our
army will try and solve the drug problem from now on. At the moment the
Burmese are trying to label us as drug traffickers to turn the world
against us. If the UN wants to accuse us of dealing in drugs, I am ready to
go anywhere and prove my innocence, as long as they can come and make sure
the Burmese don't come and destroy our army and our people.

Q: What do you think is the way to get rid of amphetamines and other drugs?

A: Ordinary people can't order the chemicals for making drugs - it must be
people in the medical circle. And people who make the drugs must have the
knowledge to do it. They must have learned it specially. The people who do
this, just think about making money. They don't care about other people. If
you can control these people, there will be no drugs destroying the people
of the world like today. 

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The Nation: Ethnic Cleansing: Rape as a Weapon of War in Burma (Editorial) 
31 May, 1998 By Dennis Bernstein and Leslie Kean 

The military junta is employing a special tool of war against minority
populations: the rape of ethnic women.

Two Akha girls, taken from their rural village by Burmese troops and used
as army porters, could not have imagined the lethal brutality they would
face during their forced internment. A 61-year-old village headman of the
Akha ethnic minority living in Burma's eastern highlands told Amnesty
International that he knew both teens and spoke with them after they were
released by government soldiers. He said 15-year-old Mi Au and 16-year-old
Mi She were ''happy healthy girls'' before they were kidnapped.

''They had been relatives of my wife and their village was very close to
ours, so I knew them well,'' said the headman. ''The two of them had been
raped continually for six nights by two or three men each night, including
the soldiers' commander.'' Despite the multiple serial rapes, said the
headman, the teens were still forced to labour all day as army porters.

''After their release,'' he said, ''the two girls didn't sleep, didn't eat
and eventually just died.''
In the decade since it seized power, Burma's military has become
increasingly dependent on the use of forced labour and torture to maintain
power, build the country's infrastructure, and carry out its war against
the stubborn ethnic resistance. Evidence is increasing that the Burmese
soldiers and their commanders are employing another tool of war against
minority populations: the rape of ethnic women.

The fate of the two Akha girls is not uncommon in Burma, renamed Myanmar by
the military junta. A US State Department country report for Burma,
released at the end of January, states that government troops ''continued
to impress women for military porterage duties, and there were many reports
of rape of ethnic minority women by soldiers.''

The UN Special Rapporteur on Burma stated in January that Burmese troops
have been abducting ''increasing numbers of women, including young girls
and the elderly'' who have become victims of rape and other abuses. Based
on his report, the UN Commission on Human Rights Resolution on Burma of
April 1998 expressed ''deep concern'' about violations against women in
Burma ''in particular forced labour, sexual violence and exploitation,
including rape''.

According to interviews with human rights workers, ethnic leaders, and
elected members of Burma's parliament in exile, military rapes occur
typically during raids on villages; when women are abducted for forced
labour; during encounters with victims of forced relocations in the jungle;
and in coerced marriages.

The UN Commission on Human Rights Resolution in April states that women
most likely to be raped are ''refugees, internally displaced women and
women belonging to ethnic minorities or the political opposition''. These
claims are supported by a newly released report, ''School for Rape: The
Burmese Military and Sexual Violence'' by the legal rights group Earth
Rights International (ERI) which says that rapes also occur ''as part of a
programme of ethnic cleansing''.

Thaung Tun, deputy chief of mission at the Burmese Embassy in Washington
DC, denies the allegations of widespread rape by the military. ''It is
hardly possible for rape to occur in Myanmar on a policy basis,'' he said.
''Maybe on an individual basis. But if it happens there are laws in place
and people would be punished,'' he said.

An epidemic of rape

''School for Rape'' documents a wide-array of sexual abuses by Burma's
military forces and accuses them of ''the savage domination of women
outside the scope of acceptable wartime conduct.'' It is the first in-depth
study to document the widespread perpetration of rape by the army in Burma
and to explore the causes for the military's abuse of ethnic women. The
1998 report states that ''the violent sexual abuse of ethnic Burmese women
at the hands of the military occurs in epidemic proportions''.

The Shan village of Kaeng Kham in Kunhing was rocked by this epidemic of
military rape. According to a 1996 Shan Human Rights Foundation report,
sexual attacks at Kaeng Kham village often occurred at night after the
village men left for work at a local logging company. The highly specific
report states that: ''A platoon of troops from LIB 519, led by Sergeant Hla
Phyu are stationed at Kaeng Kham village. At night, while the men are away,
Sergeant Hla Phyu and his men repeatedly raped the women, going from house
to house. Every adult woman in this small village has been raped.''

''When soldiers rape women, there is no action taken against them,'' said
Shan resistance leader Sao Ood Kesi in a recent phone interview from Chiang
Mai. 

''It's understood that they have permission from their officers to rape the
women. They rape and sometimes they kill the women afterwards.''

A 1997 Shan Human Rights report documents the mass murder of dozens of
ethnic women and girls after being gang raped by Burmese soldiers.
According to the report, on September 15, 1997, 120 troops led by Capt Htun
Mya found 42 women and 57 men hiding in the forest in Kunhing township. The
troops gang-raped all the women for two days and two nights. After that,
all the 99 villagers were reportedly killed by the soldiers.

Amnesty International's April 1998 report, ''Myanmar: Atrocities in the
Shan State'', tells the story of a 30-year-old mother, Nang Ing, who was
raped by three soldiers. The soldiers then poured boiling water over her.
She died three days later, ''burned from her neck to her feet'' and wounded
on her back. In another village, 24-year-old Naing Mai was raped over a
period of five days by the military. As witnessed by farmers hiding in the
area, ''she was then covered with pieces of wood and burned to death'',
says the Amnesty report.

Sao Ood Kesi provided The Vancouver Sun with a list of 83 Shan State rape
cases in 1997, in which investigators documented the date, place, name of
the victim and her parents, and the battalion number and name of the
captains, majors and sergeants who committed the rapes. The list indicates
that many women are killed following the rapes. The list also appears to
confirm Sao Ood Kesi's claims that the highest levels of the Burmese field
command regularly participate in the rapes. ''If they make an operation on
the area, they all do it. The commander of infantry does it too.''

Last November, in Monghsat township, said Sao Ood Kesi, ''a commander, one
of the majors, ordered a Lahu headman to send a girl for him. The headman
sent a woman between 30 and 40 years old. The major scolded the village
headman, 'Don't you know I am an officer from the government?' '' The
headman was then forced to provide a much younger woman for the commander.

People's enemy

Burma's army, known as the Tatmadaw, plays an enormous role in the
governing of Burma. Most of the ministers and deputies composing the
military junta's cabinet are current or past members of the Tatmadaw.

Many soldiers are teenagers, often kidnapped by the army. They are given
little food, forbidden contact with their families, and forced to beat each
other for punishment. Abused physically and humiliated every day, the young
recruits are then set loose among the ethnic minorities who they have been
indoctrinated to believe are ''the people's enemy'' and ''internal
destructionists''.

Yet ethnic leaders and Burmese pro-democracy activists assert that the rape
is more systematic and sinister than simply soldiers out of control. Many
claim, as does the ERI report, that violence against women is directly
related to the military's goal of wiping out all ethnic resistance, even if
it means genocide against a particular minority.

There is a growing body of evidence that a pre-existing plan of ethnic
cleansing is in place in Burma, organised and carried out by the Tatmadaw.
According to a document marked ''top secret'' and apparently issued a few
weeks after the military takeover in 1988, a policy of ''blood mixing'' and
Burmanisation of ethnic minorities was initiated which offers monetary
bonuses to soldiers who ''occupy'' Shan women. Top officials of Burma's
government in exile and human rights investigators in the region believe
that this two-page document, in the form of a letter, originated from high
levels of the ruling military junta.

The letter, dated Oct 10, 1988 and addressed to ''All Great Ruling
Burmans'', has been circulating among the Burmese army in the ethnic areas
where the worst human rights abuses occur. The ''top secret'' letter
describes a plan for the takeover of the Shan territory by the Burman
majority.

''We must deviously attack those who are not Burman in economic as well as
social ways,'' says the document. ''The easiest way to implement these
ideas is to occupy [marry or impregnate] women who are not Burman.'' The
document goes on to offer a monthly financial reward to ''anyone who can
occupy a Shan woman''.

Ka Hsaw Wa, a Karen human rights investigator who co-founded Earth Rights
International and organises fact-finding missions for Human Rights Watch
and foreign journalists, has been working for 10 years to document human
rights abuses in Burma's ethnic areas. In 1994, Ka Hsaw Wa encountered the
Burmanisation letter in three different areas of Burma -- from two
independent sources who showed him the letter, and a third who described it
in detail. These sources retrieved the letter from Slorc soldiers and
outposts in the Shan, Karen and Karenni areas.

Villagers in the ethnic areas have also encountered the letter. One Karen
woman told Betsy Apple, an attorney with Earth Rights International and
author of ''School for Rape'', that she once had in her possession a letter
that told Burmese soldiers that they ''would get certain rewards if they
would marry certain kinds of ethnic women'' and that ''your blood must be
left in the village''. A member of a local women's organisation, the woman
told Apple last year that ''the Burmese soldiers think Burman blood is the
best. People talk about the rape a lot. People say that the Burmese
soldiers want to make more Burman babies.''

''The policy does not just apply to the Shan women, as it says in the
letter, but to other ethnic groups as well,'' said Apple in a phone
interview from New York. ''It seems to have originated from the commander
level,'' she said, ''but we're not sure how high.''

Bo Hla Tint, American Affairs Minister for the Burmese government in exile
based in Washington DC, believes the document originated from the ruling
junta, although its source cannot be proved. Elected to Parliament in 1990,
Bo Hla Tint helped form the National Coalition Government of the Union of
Burma after the Slorc nullified the election results which voted it out of
power. He first encountered the letter in a Karen outpost in 1992, when it
was intercepted over the airwaves from a communication between two Burmese
military commanders. Prime Minister Dr Sein Win, the elected official who
heads the government in exile, says the document most likely originated
from the Defence Ministry Department of Psychological Warfare.

''Regardless of the source or intent of this document, it accurately
represents an ethnic cleansing policy of the Burmese military,'' he said.
''There is no doubt that the widespread rapes by troops are fuelled by the
policies expressed in this document.''

Even more bizarre than the grandiose posturing of the letter by the ''Great
Ruling Burmans'' to ''diligently convince Shan women to gradually bow to
Burmanisation'', is the common belief among soldiers that they can win over
ethnic women through giving them sufficient sexual pleasure to induce them
to fall in love. The technique of inserting metal or glass balls in the
penises of new, young soldiers has become popular ''because women can get
more feeling'' in the words of one soldier.

''I interviewed many former soldiers who actually showed me their penises
with the balls inserted,'' said Ka Hsaw Wa. ''It is a common practice. Even
if the women are raped, the soldiers believed that they would come back for
more because of the pleasure.''

It is not known how widespread this practice is. The soldiers are not
required to undergo the surgical process -- which is done without
anesthetic -- but, according to Ka Hsaw Wa, they are ''indirectly
encouraged'' to do it. Six soldiers from one battalion told Ka Hsaw Wa that
their sergeant suggested they do it. ''There was no way for them to refuse
it, because they were afraid,'' said Ka Hsaw Wa. One soldier told
investigators that half the members of his battalion had been implanted
with the metal balls.

''School for Rape'' concludes that rape is being used to change the ethnic
balance in Burma. ''By forcibly impregnating ethnic minority women, Burmese
soldiers can increase the majority population through more Burman births
[the offspring is considered to bear the ethnicity of the father only] and
decrease the number of ethnic minorities through death resulting from
sexually transmitted diseases, botched abortions, suicides, and actual
injuries from the rapes,'' says the report.

Crimes against humanity

Jennifer Green, staff attorney with the Centre for Constitutional Rights
who specialises in international women's rights, is convinced that the
Burmese military is guilty of crimes against humanity.

''The facts presented in 'School for Rape' indicate that these acts of
violence against women are both widespread and systematic, that there is a
pattern of rape, and that civilians are targeted for political reasons or
because they are part of a certain ethnic group,'' she said.

Green is co-counsel for a landmark federal lawsuit against the oil
companies Unocal and Total. The 1996 case, initiated by 14 Burmese
plaintiffs, was filed on behalf of the ''tens of thousands of people'' who
have been victims of a range of abuses in Burma. ''Girls and women have
been raped in the presence of family members or within hearing distance of
family members,'' says the complaint for the lawsuit, filed in US District
Court in Los Angeles.

The complaint includes rape in its charges of crimes against humanity,
violence against women and torture. ''There is a growing acceptance that
rape is not just a form of humiliating treatment but is an extreme form of
violence and should be regarded as torture,'' says Green.

The War Crimes Tribunal is mandated only to deal with violations in Rwanda
and the former Yugoslavia. Attorney Jennifer Green, researchers for ERI,
and leaders from Burma's elected government in exile are now urging that
the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and its
Causes lead a mission to investigate the claims of systematic rape by the
Burmese military.

''In a situation where you've got serious allegations of this nature, they
should be brought to the attention of any international mechanism that
could weigh in,'' said Regan Ralph, acting director of the Women's Rights
Division of Human Rights Watch. ''Since people have documented this
happening in Burma, it is critically important to secure accountability for
it.''

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South China Morning Post: Currents 
27 May, 1998 By William Barnes 

This Ma Ma Lay sat stunned and red-eyed on the steps of a small shop in
Mahachai, about an hour's drive southeast of Bangkok. The Burmese woman
nervously knotted and unknotted the longyi around her waist. Suddenly
deprived of money and friends in a "strange country" she had no idea what
to do next.  Ma Ma Lay, or little sister, had just narrowly escaped arrest
by throwing herself under the shop's only bed. The police raiding party
missed her but seized the owner and his wife and pocketed 300,000 baht
(HK$60,975) from the cash box.

Welcome to Thailand's way of dealing with neighbours who overstay their
welcome. Similar scenes are played out every day in "Little Burma" where
women scream and beg police not to strip them of savings that may have
taken two years of cleaning fish to acquire. Much worse, of course, can
happen to the really unlucky ones.

On classy golf courses and at myriad meetings in plush hotels, leaders of
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) squeak with delight at
the pleasure of each other's company. But in the dark corners of the region
corrupt police and bumptious officials are deaf to the cries of workers
without powerful friends.

Ma Ma Lay was undoubtedly an economic immigrant. Her principle fear about
being returned to Rangoon was unemployment and a miserable stepmother. But
she, and the million or more Burmese, Chinese, Laotians and Cambodians in
the underground economy who were once welcome to work for sub-legal wages
have now been declared job-snatchers. It is debatable whether even in a
time of economic crisis many Thais really are prepared to tackle the dirty,
underpaid and sometimes dangerous work typically done by "guest" workers.
But why can Thailand, which is boosting its own plans to send workers
abroad, not treat people like Ma Ma Lay with dignity?

Thailand is not unique. In Kuala Lumpur, capital of Malaysia, many
Indonesian construction workers who helped keep the country's growth rates
ticking over suddenly became a public menace and were ejected. But Thais do
claim to have a heart and a reforming government. Perhaps they should
remember that good countries treat other as they would like to be treated
themselves.

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Government of Canada: Call for Restoration of Democracy in Burma
27 May, 1998 

Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Government of Canada

Axworthy Calls for Restoration of Democracy Eight Years After Suspended
Election Process in Burma

Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy expressed today, on the eighth
anniversary of the last democratic election in Burma, Canada's profound
disappointment with the Burmese military regime's continuing refusal to
restore democracy.

"Eight years ago, the Burmese people exercised their democratic right to
choose their own government," Mr. Axworthy said. "The military dictatorship
refused to honour the election results. Canada deeply regrets that the
regime continues to deny Burma's citizens their democratic freedoms."
The Canadian government continues to urge the Burmese military regime to
initiate a meaningful dialogue with Burma's pro-democracy leaders,
including Aung San Suu Kyi, as an important step toward the restoration of
democracy.

"The future well-being of the people of Burma and its economic development
demand that the military regime end its repression and restore political
freedom to the people of Burma," said Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific)
Raymond Chan.

****************************************************************