AFP-British rights protestor goes t

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Subject: AFP-British rights protestor goes to ground

Tuesday, November 2 8:07 PM SGT

British rights protestor goes to ground
YANGON, Nov 2 (AFP) -
A British human rights activist released from Myanmar's notorious Insein
prison has gone to the country's interior rather than face the media after
her ordeal, officials said Tuesday.

Rachel Goldwyn travelled to northern Shan State with her parents after she
was set free on Tuesday, two months into a seven-year sentence for sedition,
British and Myanmar officials said.

In a rare move, visas for Goldwyn and her parents had been extended by one
month, a Myanmar government spokesman said.

"I do not know when exactly they will leave the country because they are
allowed to stay in the country as long as they want," he told AFP.

A Foreign Office spokesman in London denied Goldwyn's escape was part of a
deal with the junta to mute international press coverage of her
pro-democracy protest.

Her trip was merely a bid to "get away from the media," who would be "camped
on her doorstep" back home, said a Foreign Office spokesman in London.

"No deals have been done, the decision to release Rachel was taken by
Burmese authorities alone while her appeal was pending," said the spokesman.

"We do not intervene in any cases overseas unless in exceptional
circumstances (where) there appears to be a miscarriage of justice and when
all the legal processes have been completed.

"In this case all the legal processes had not been completed"

The Myanmar spokesman warned that the clemency granted to Goldwyn did not
imply the junta would be lenient towards another British prisoner.

"Mr James Mawdsley has been accorded clemency twice in the past but
unfortunately he reentered Myanmar illegally and has again breached the same
laws."

Mawdsley, 26, is serving a 17-year sentence in Shan state after being
arrested three times in Myanmar within two years.

The Foreign Office spokesman could not say if Goldwyn would visit Mawdsley
while in Shan State but stressed that her choice of destination was not
connected to his confinement there.

Goldwyn's release was hailed by British envoys here as a victory for "quiet
diplomacy."

She was arrested in September after chaining herself to a lamp post and
singing a pro-democracy song in a Yangon marketplace.

The military has ruled Myanmar in various guises for decades and has been
vilified around the world for ignoring the landslide election victory of
Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy in 1990.

It is accused of a catalogue of human rights violations and faces a
punishing range of Western sanctions.