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Four AU Students Among The Arrests



Four AU Students Among Activists
Detained in Burma
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 11, 1998; Page A18
BANGKOK, Aug. 10?Eighteen foreigners, including four students from
American University, remained in detention in Burma tonight as the military
junta in Rangoon weighs whether to charge them formally -- and perhaps
send them to prison -- for handing out leaflets commemorating the date of
the regime's bloody crackdown on a student-led, pro-democracy uprising
a decade ago.
A spokesman in Rangoon said the 18 activists were detained Sunday after
handing out thousands of tiny red pamphlets, about the size of the palm of
a hand, with the numbers "8888" -- for the date, Aug. 8, 1988, when
troops opened fire on student protesters in Burma, launching a crackdown
that eventually killed thousands. The leaflets also read: "Don't Forget --
Don't Give up."
The Rangoon government has been extremely jittery in the weeks leading
up to the anniversary, and has been clamping down on opposition from the
National League for Democracy and restricting the movements of the
party's leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.
The activists, who went to Burma on tourist visas last Friday, were
members of a group called Altsean, for Alternative ASEAN Network.
ASEAN is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which last year
admitted Burma as its ninth member, over the vehement objections of
human rights groups and others critical of the regime's suppression of
political dissent.
Six of the 18 people arrested are Americans, one is Australian, and the
rest are from Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. The four
American University students apparently became interested in the cause of
Burma's democracy movement after hearing Suu Kyi's husband speak at
the campus in Washington.
The four AU students, all women, were identified as Nisha Marie Anand,
21, a graduate student, Anjannette Hamilton, 20, Michele Keegan, 19, and
Sapna Chhatpar, 20. The other detained Americans were identified as
Tyler Giannini, 28, a lawyer, and Joel Greer, 34, a Yale University law
student.
["We're trying to first make sure these students get all the necessary help
that we can to help get them out of there," Todd Sedmak, an American
University spokesman said today.
[Sedmak said university officials had been in touch with the State
Department about the detention of the AU students, staff writer John
Fountain reported.]
Representatives of the activist group here in Bangkok were concerned that
some students had not informed their families of their plans to travel into
Burma.
By nightfall, officials of the American Embassy had not been allowed to
visit the detained activists. "They have asked repeatedly for consular
access," a U.S. Embassy spokeswoman in Bangkok said tonight. "So far,
no one from the embassy has been able to see them."
There was no word on the detainees' conditions, and supporters here were
concerned that they did not know where the activists were being held.
Some apparently were detained at the airport Sunday just as they were to
board their scheduled return flight to Bangkok.
The Burmese government spokesman in Rangoon told reporters today, "At
the moment, I can't say the extent of legal action that will be taken against
them."
Burmese authorities searched the students' hotel rooms and found what a
statement said was seditious material. The statement said the activists
"were apprehended attempting to incite unrest in Yangon." Yangon is the
junta's name for Rangoon, a switch made at the same time the regime
began calling the country Myanmar.
Diplomats were divided over whether the 18 would be formally charged --
and face possible prison sentances -- or whether they might all be
deported after a brief time in detention for questioning.
An Australian diplomat said he had a "gut feeling" that all 18 would be
deported. But others were skeptical, particularly after initially anticipating
that the detainees would be placed on the day's last flight from Rangoon to
Bangkok that landed here around dinnertime.
The arrests come at a sensitive time in Burma's long-strained relations with
the West, and as Rangoon has shown signs of increasing defiance of
international opinion. Earlier this month at an ASEAN regional meeting in
Manila, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright launched a blistering
rhetorical attack on the Burmese regime.
"With each passing day, the likelihood of a social breakdown -- or
explosion -- that could undermine regional stability grows higher," she said.
She called Burma "a country in great and growing distress."
As she spoke, troops had surrounded the car of Suu Kyi to prevent her
from visiting supporters in a provincial city. In Manila, Albright and the
foreign ministers of Australia, New Zealand, the European Union and other
ASEAN countries confronted the Burmese foreign minister, Ohn Gyaw, in
an unscheduled meeting and demanded that foreign diplomats in Rangoon
be permitted to visit the opposition leader.
Ohn Gyaw delivered a testy response from the junta in Rangoon the next
day saying the request for a meeting was denied.
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company