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UK Diplomats seek to free Briton in



Subject: UK Diplomats seek to free Briton in Burma 

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<font size=5><b>UK</font></b><font size=3>
</font><font size=5><b>Diplomats seek to free Briton in Burma</font></b><font size=3> <br>
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</font><font size=2>Ms Goldwyn was arrested in a Rangoon market</font><font size=3> <br>
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British diplomats in the Burmese capital Rangoon are urgently trying to make contact with a British human rights activist arrested on Tuesday for singing revolutionary songs. <br>
Concern is growing for 28-year-old Rachel Goldwyn, from Barnes, south-west London, who went missing after tying herself to a lamp-post. <br>
She is being questioned by military police after taking part in a pro-democracy demonstration in Rangoon. <br>
Miss Goldwyn is the second Briton to be arrested in the last fortnight for protesting against Burma's military dictatorship. <br>
James Mawdsley, 26, who was arrested in Burma's Shan state, was sentenced to 17 years in jail without trial for carrying anti-government literature. <br>
British Embassy officials have been prevented from seeing him. <br>
Friends of Rachel said her passionate commitment to democracy led to her arrest in the Burmese capital Rangoon on Tuesday. <br>
Despite their request for immediate consular access, British diplomats have still not been allowed to see her. <br>
They are concerned that Rachel could be put on trial without legal representation. <br>
The Burmese military is holding thousands of democracy activists in appalling conditions. <br>
Before she left England, Rachel admitted to friends she feared being raped and tortured inside a Burmese jail if she was arrested. <br>
<b>'Please be calm'</b> <br>
Miss Goldwyn's parents thought she was going to Germany. <br>
But she travelled to Rangoon, leaving a letter in her bedroom which read: &quot;Dear Mum and Dad, I'll be home in about two weeks' time. I'll be deported to Bangkok. <br>
&quot;Don't fear, don't panic, please be calm. I'm so sorry you had to learn about this way. There was no other way.&quot; <br>
Soon after arriving in Rangoon she was arrested while giving out leaflets and singing the revolutionary song &quot;We will never forget&quot; in front of a crowd of 300 people. <br>
The Democratic Burmese Students' Organisation (UK) said a group of students who sang the song in 1995 in received 20-year prison sentences. <br>
Miss Goldwyn's mother, Dr Charmian Goldwyn, who is a GP, said she and her TV-producer husband Ed, who live in Barnes, were desperately worried for Rachel, the youngest of their three daughters. <br>
Miss Goldwyn, who attended Goldolphin School in Hammersmith, west London, was an economics graduate from the London School of Economics and had become interested in the Burmese pro-democracy movement while working in a refugee camp in Thailand two years ago. <br>
&quot;I am very proud of her, but I also desperately wish she hadn't done this,&quot; said Dr Goldwyn. &quot;Really to do this sort of thing, to draw attention to the terrible things that are going on in Burma, is very brave.&quot; <br>
On Thursday, with 09-09-99 being an auspicious date, pro-democracy activists protested all over Asia against the military regime in Burma, which insists on calling the country Myanmar. <br>
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