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Friends of NLD Australia media rele



Subject: Friends of NLD Australia media release

Media release		November 1 1999		Burmese refugees

The Friends of NLD Australia have called upon
the Australian government to increase its intake
of Burmese nationals in the wake of the United
Nations 1999 Special Rapporteur's Report on
Myanmar to the United Nations General Assembly.
Burma, renamed Myanmar by the ruling military
regime, has one of the world's worst human
rights records.

The UN report states that "There has been no
progress in the situation of human rights in
Myanmar. If anything, the situation is
worsening. Repression of civil and political
rights continues and intensifies whenever there
is any form of public protest or any form of
public political activity. Repressive laws are
still used to prohibit and punish any exercise
of the basic rights of freedom of thought,
expression, assembly and association, in
particular in connection with the exercise of
legitimate political rights. This regime of
repression puts the right to life, liberty and
physical integrity permanently at risk when it
is not simply violated. The rule of law cannot
be said to exist and function as the judicial
system is subject to a military regime and only
serves as a handmaiden to a policy of
repression. In the ethnic areas, the policy of
establishing absolute political and
administrative control brings out the worst in
the military, resulting in killings, brutality,
rape and other human rights violations from
which the old, women, children and the weak are
not spared."

Friends of NLD Australia have immediate concerns
regarding the situation of many refugees from
Burma currently in Australia. The denial of
applications to stay in Australia will result in
detention without the protection of law upon
their deportation to Burma for those people who
have exercised their rights within the
Australian democratic system to protest against
the rape, torture and murder of their fellow
countrymen. The Australian Department of Foreign
Affairs and Trade acknowledges in its 1996
Myanmar Country Profile that " The Myanmar
authorities do seek to monitor the activities of
Myanmar opposition abroad, and are generally
aware of what happens within the Myanmar
opposition community in Australia". Detention
for political prisoners invariably means
imprisonment under the most inhumane conditions
with torture, solitary confinement, beatings and
lack of adequate food and health services the
common practice. 

In the aftermath of the Bangkok Embassy siege,
Thailand is seeking the cooperation of the
international community in bearing its share of
the refugee crisis.  The United Nations High
Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has reassured
Thailand that it will help expedite the
relocation of Burmese students to third
countries willing to take them. Friends of NLD
Australia call for an increase in the number of
Burmese nationals entering Australia under the
Refugee and Humanitarian Program categories,
including Special Assistance Category for
Burmese in Thailand, Refugee, and Women at Risk
programs.

The main focus of Australia's refugee programs
in 1998-99 were people from the countries of the
former Yugoslavia, the Middle East and Africa.
Friends of NLD Australia call upon the
Australian government to increase the proportion
of Burmese refugees within the 4,000 places
available as part of the Refugee Program. The
Refugee Program is for people who have been
identified in conjunction with UNHCR as in need
of resettlement, the situation in which many
Burmese refugees in Thailand will find
themselves in the coming months.

Contact :	Trevor Edmond, Friends of NLD
Australia, PO Box 288 Enmore NSW 2042