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CORRUPTION and ABUSE OF POWER are p (r)
- Subject: CORRUPTION and ABUSE OF POWER are p (r)
- From: MSoe9872@xxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 22:01:00
Subject: Re: CORRUPTION and ABUSE OF POWER are part of the STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE.
more info:http://www.student.ipfw.edu/~soem01
Myanmar threatens rift with Thailand over student exiles
October 7, 1999
Web posted at: 7:50 a.m. HKT (2350 GMT)
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Myanmar warned on Wednesday that relations with
Thailand could be harmed if Bangkok does not tighten security at its refugee
camps. The warning came after dissidents took 38 hostages at the Myanmar
embassy in Bangkok.
"It is time for Thailand to shoulder the responsibility, to
stop and think that this could very well lead to some adverse effects on
bilateral relations
between Thailand and Myanmar," said an editorial in the state-run New
Light of Myanmar daily. The Thai government, which let the embassy captors
go free on grounds that they were "student activists struggling for
democracy,"
resolved Wednesday to tighten embassy security and impose stricter controls
on Myanmar exiles.
Five rebels stormed the embassy on Friday
with AK-47s concealed in a guitar case and
took the hostages. They were released 26
hours later, when Thai authorities agreed to
give the rebels safe passage by helicopter back
to the border with Myanmar, also known as
Burma.
At least two former student dissidents at the
Maneeloy holding center for asylum-seekers
from Myanmar, near the border with Myanmar
in the Thai province of Ratchaburi, are believed
by Thai authorities to have been among the five
at the embassy.
The identity of the others was unclear. Thai
media have reported that they include at least
one dissident involved in the hijacking of an
airplane on a domestic flight in Myanmar in
1989 and who has served jail time in Thailand.
The New Light editorial claimed that most of
the 24 camps inside the Thai border were
sheltering armed insurgents and anti-Yangon terrorists
fighting "under themask of democracy."
A meeting of Thailand's anti-terrorism committee concluded that poor
intelligence on the activities of dissidents from Myanmar and weak security
at the Yangon mission in Bangkok were to blame for the hostage-taking.
"There will be improvement in the system controlling the students. In every
refugee camp around the country the rules will be stricter," Interior
Minister Sanan Kachornprasart said after the meeting.
An estimated 3,000 students from Myanmar have sought refuge
in Thailand.They were at the forefront of the democracy movement in their
homeland. A popular uprising for civilian government in Myanmar was crushed
in 1988
at the cost of more than 3,000 lives.