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SCMP : Regime detains 18 foreigners



South China Morning Post
Monday  August 10  1998

Regime detains 18 foreigners 'for trying to incite unrest' 

AGENCIES in Rangoon and Bangkok 
Eighteen foreigners were detained in Rangoon yesterday for allegedly
attempting to incite unrest.

"Foreigners who were distributing pamphlets were reported to the police by
citizens and taken to the police stations for questioning and they are
being detained while the investigation continues," a junta spokesman said.

Of the 18, six were American, three Thai, three Malaysian, three
Indonesian, two Philippine nationals and one Australian, he said.

Witnesses said foreign activists had handed out thousands of leaflets at
tourist sites calling on the Burmese people to remember the massacres of
August 8, 1988.

Red leaflets in Burmese and English were distributed from mid-morning at
points including the landmark Shwedagon Pagoda, the witnesses said.

"8-8-88 - don't forget - don't give up," they reportedly read.

The detainees were picked up at "seven or eight" separate points, the junta
spokesman said.

He said he was unsure where the foreigners were being held or whether they
would be charged or released.

The military regime stiffened security on the streets around Nobel laureate
Aung San Suu Kyi's house yesterday after complying with her requests to
withdraw a detachment from the property.

But security outside her home and in the capital as a whole remained light
a day after the sensitive 10th anniversary of the uprising against military
rule, which the army crushed, killing as many as 3,000 people.

The anniversary itself passed calmly on Saturday with no demonstrations
anywhere, the Government reported.

"Even though the democracy princess wanted the people to go on the streets
and create anarchy in the country, the people dare not break the laws,"
said a report which mocked Ms Aung San Suu Kyi.

"The frog shouts by aping the lion [but, its voice unheard,] it shouts
until it dies of exhaustion," said the commentary in the New Light of
Myanmar.

Ms Aung San Suu Kyi has been stepping up her campaign to bring more
democracy to the country ahead of an August 21 deadline she has set for the
Government to finally convene the parliament elected in 1990.