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Suu Kyi supporters forced to 'resig



Subject: Suu Kyi supporters forced to 'resign'

Australian News Network
Suu Kyi supporters forced to 'resign'
>From AFP and AP correspondents in Bangkok and Rangoon
5jan99

BURMA'S military Government has continued to dismantle the country's main
opposition political party, with the State-run press yesterday reporting 256
more members of the National League for Democracy have resigned. 

As Burma marked its 52nd anniversary of independence yesterday, the league
is reeling from a government campaign to close its offices and operations
around the country. 

Although the Government-run New Light of Myanmar reported the resignations
were voluntary, 1991 Nobel peace prize winner and league leader Aung San Suu
Kyi insisted they were coerced. 

The Government arrested nearly 1000 league members in September to prevent
Ms Suu Kyi from convening a national parliament, which was freely elected in
1990. Analysts believe Burma's generals have effectively crushed the
infrastructure of Ms Suu Kyi's opposition but will find it harder to stifle
a grassroots yearning for democracy. Burma's official press has, in recent
months, featured accounts of hundreds of league members resigning and mass
rallies denouncing Ms Suu Kyi, which diplomats say are staged. 

Ms Suu Kyi is often pilloried in the press as an "axe-handle" ­ a term used
by the junta against people it considers as agents of foreign governments. 

In a rare move yesterday, junta chairman Than Shwe publicly lambasted Ms Suu
Kyi and accused critical foreign powers of neo-colonialism, in an
uncompromising independence day message. "The people of the country have
strongly pledged to safeguard the nation against destructive threats of
negative-viewed axe-handles in the country and the neo-colonialists," he
said. 

Latest reports say league members left the party in Ayeyawady division and
the central city of Mandalay. Party leaders accuse the Government of forcing
thousands of activists to resign after detaining them in "guest houses".