Myanmar junta steps up propaganda o

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Myanmar junta steps up propaganda offensive against opposition

Wed 30 Sep 98 - 11:22 GMT 

YANGON, Sept 30 (AFP) - Myanmar's junta Wednesday stepped up its propaganda
offensive against opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, reporting rallies
demanding she be deported and branding the Nobel peace laureate "Miss
Trouble."

Some 28,000 people attended a rally to call for tough action against Aung San
Suu Kyi and her National league for Democracy (NLD), reports said Wednesday.
Newspapers published vitriolic poems about the leader of Myanmar's beleaguered
pro-democracy movement.

Speakers at the rally in a sports stadium in northwestern Myanmar condemned
the NLD for demanding the convening of parliament and encouraging economic
sanctions against the country.

Similar rallies in Mandalay on Saturday and Yangon last Thursday each
attracted about 20,000 people showing  support for the military and denouncing
the NLD, according to witnesses and official reports.

"What the rallies are saying, most vocally and justifiably, is that it is high
time the government took concrete action," the state's New Light of Myanmar
newspaper said in a commentary.

"The kind of move that will bring a halt to the NLD's wily and wicked ways."

Speakers at the latest rally in Monywa, a trading town near the border with
India, condemned the NLD for calling for economic sanctions against Myanmar
and demanded Aung San Suu Kyi's deportation.

"A superpower mistakenly believed in their crooked words to such an extent
that economic sanction was imposed on Myanmar," said one speaker, in clear
reference to the United States, whose comments were published in the
newspaper. He demanded that Aung San Suu Kyi be deported.

The rallies have been among the ruling military's most visible efforts to
counter pressure from the NLD demanding the convening of the parliament
elected in 1990 and which the junta has not allowed to sit.

The polls were won by the opposition by a landslide.

In a speech Monday, junta first secretary Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt said
Myanmar should be "alert to the danger posed by aliens who are interfering in
our internal affairs" using local "lackeys."

"No government will tolerate (the) creation of a situation that will lead to
destruction of peace and stability," he said.

The NLD has called for international support for its bid to convene
parliament, and called on foreign countries to maintain sanctions against the
ruling State Peace and Development Council.

A top US trade official backed the calls in Bangkok on Monday, saying
sanctions were vital in forcing the junta to respect the desire of its
citizens for human rights and democracy.

Alan Larson, assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs,
said although sanctions had yet to yield significant results, it was an
expression of the international community's will.

Japan's foreign minister, Masahiko Komura, also assured US Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright that Tokyo will not resume aid to Myanmar in the near
future, a senior US official said.

The United States, Canada and the European Union have imposed economic
sanctions and boycotts to pressure Yangon on human rights.

The junta meanwhile published another scathing poem about Aung San Suu Kyi,
the second in two days, as its propoganda war against the democracy movement
took a new twist.

"Miss Trouble is acting to destroy/While pretending/To love our union ...
Citizens unite/Let's hound her out," said the latest poem, published in the
New Light of Myanmar daily.

On Tuesday, the state-run press published a poem titled "You Go Home," which
played on Aung San Suu Kyi's long residence in Britain and her marriage to a
Briton.

It called her a "blind elephant" in a "bad mood" and demanded she return to
"whiteland."

                                                                          ©AFP
1998

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