Myanmar Military Said Arrested 40
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Myanmar authorities arrested more than 40 youth members of the opposition National League for Democracy over the traditional new year holiday this month, party leader Aung San Suu Kyi said.
In a videotaped interview smuggled out of Myanmar and released in Bangkok to news organizations Thursday, Suu Kyi said the arrests came during the Thingyan festival in mid-April. The detainees were involved in meetings on reorganizing the NLD's youth wing.
It was not immediately clear if they were still being held. There was no immediate comment from the military government.
``They arrested over 40 people. They also arrested three house owners, the houses in which the meetings took place,'' said Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle for democracy in Myanmar, also known as Burma.
``According to the law, they shouldn't arrest anybody without a warrant,'' Suu Kyi said. ``And of course all the people were taken away without a warrant on sight.''
``This is a demonstration of the fact that as far as the human rights violations are concerned, this regime is not getting any better at all,'' Suu Kyi said.
Myanmar's ruling military, which rejected the NLD's landslide victory in 1990 general elections, has been censured repeatedly by the United Nations for abuses. Hundreds of NLD members have been arrested and jailed, often without trial.
Suu Kyi was kept under house arrest for six years until 1995. Her movements and political activities are still severely restricted.
Suu Kyi's comments were released one day after the NLD announced in Yangon that Aye Tha Aung, the secretary of a small committee set up by the party to serve as a self-styled surrogate parliament, had been detained by the authorities.
An NLD statement said he was taken from his home Monday evening ``to an unknown place.'' The government has yet to comment.
Thursday April 27 7:24 AM ET
Suu Kyi: Myanmar Arrests 40
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Myanmar authorities arrested more than 40 youth members of the opposition National League for Democracy over the traditional new year holiday this month, party leader Aung San Suu Kyi said.
In a videotaped interview smuggled out of Myanmar and released in Bangkok to news organizations Thursday, Suu Kyi said the arrests came during the Thingyan festival in mid-April. The detainees were involved in meetings on reorganizing the NLD's youth wing.
It was not immediately clear if they were still being held.
A government spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said ``a couple of NLD activists have been called in for questioning for their alleged connections with the terrorist demolition team'' that the government says is located near the Thai border.
``They arrested over 40 people. They also arrested three house owners, the houses in which the meetings took place,'' said Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle for democracy in Myanmar, also known as Burma.
``According to the law, they shouldn't arrest anybody without a warrant,'' Suu Kyi said. ``And of course all the people were taken away without a warrant on sight.''
``This is a demonstration of the fact that as far as the human rights violations are concerned, this regime is not getting any better at all,'' Suu Kyi said.
Myanmar's ruling military, which rejected the NLD's landslide victory in 1990 general elections, has been censured repeatedly by the United Nations for abuses. Hundreds of NLD members have been arrested and jailed, often without trial.
Suu Kyi was kept under house arrest for six years until 1995. Her movements and political activities are still severely restricted.
Suu Kyi's comments were released one day after the NLD announced in Yangon that Aye Tha Aung, the secretary of a small committee set up by the party to serve as a self-styled surrogate parliament, had been detained by the authorities.
An NLD statement said he was taken from his home Monday evening ``to an unknown place.'' The government has yet to comment.
Thursday, April 27 6:56 PM SGT
China rows with neighbours at Asian anti-piracy conference
TOKYO, April 27 (AFP) -
A row pitting China against its neighbours erupted Thursday as the first ever conference to discuss collective measures against piracy attacks on ships in Asia convened here.
China, under fire in the past for letting at least one band of pirates off scot-free, fiercely resisted a Japanese proposal for joint exercises and patrols by national coastguards in Asia to stem armed attacks on ships.
"We clearly don't need joint exercises with other countries," said Li Ding, a senior border security official from China's public security ministry.
"We already have an assured ability to investigate piracy crimes ourselves, which this conference is aiming for," she said.
India lashed out at the Chinese stand, leading widespread calls for a coordinated approach against piracy on regional high seas.
"The most important thing is building up cooperation. In this first step, if we cannot cooperate, then we can't go ahead further," said Indian coastguard director-general John DeSilva.
Coastguard officials and maritime policymakers from 16 Asian countries were meeting at a Tokyo hotel for the Regional Conference on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships.
"Piracy has been occurring frequently in Southeast Asia, and this affects the prosperity of the whole of Asia," Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori said in an address opening the two-day conference.
"The need for cooperation among countries concerned is increasing," he said.
Participants include high-ranking maritime safety officials from Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, which face the notoriously dangerous Malacca Strait.
Officials from Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Myanmar, the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam were also attending.
The first meeting of its kind also drew observers from the United States, Russia and Australia.
Korean Maritime Agency chief Kim Jong-Woo told AFP he hoped the conference would achieve "such things as exchanges of information regarding piracy and sea robbery, and to allow joint exercises among countries."
In March, Asian coastguard and maritime agencies agreed to set up piracy information exchange centres in a joint bid to stem the rising piracy tide.
But the Chinese insistence on going it alone threatened to stymie the conference's aims and upset other nations.
Indonesia, whose waters are by far the most crime-ridden in the world, said cooperation was essential.
"First of all, we want mutual agreement and support," said Fahmi Djamaris, the director-general of Indonesia's sea communication department.
"When talking about piracy, we are talking about the economy as many people are without jobs," he told AFP.
Last year, China was accused by the International Maritime Bureau of failing to prosecute pirates it caught red-handed in an incident involving a Malaysian-registered tanker in 1998.
China clamped down following an outcry in the industry against the soaring number of murders on the high seas.
In January it executed 13 pirates, including gang leader Weng Siliang, convicted of massacring 23 crewmen on the Hong Kong-owned Cheung Son in November 1998.
Weng was said to have hooded a crewman and clubbed him to death.
Helped by the Chinese clampdown, the number of murders in piracy attacks has dropped dramatically -- from a horrific 78 worldwide in 1998 to three in
But worldwide, pirate attacks surged nearly 40 percent to 285 last year from 1998 and almost tripled compared with 1991, according to the Kuala Lumpur-based Piracy Reporting Centre.
Over two-thirds of last year's total took place off just seven countries -- Indonesia (113), Bangladesh (23), Malaysia (18), India (14), Singapore (13), Somalia (11) and Nigeria (11).
Thursday, April 27 3:43 AM SGT
Myanmar Opposition: Surrogate Parliament Member Detained
YANGON (AP)--The secretary of a small committee sponsored by the opposition to serve as a self-styled surrogate parliament has been detained by the Myanmar authorities, the leading opposition party announced in a statement distributed Wednesday.
The statement from the National League for Democracy said that Aye Tha Aung of the 10-person Committee Representing the People's parliament - CRPP - was taken from his home Monday evening "to an unknown place."
NLD head Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate, is also a member of the committee.
The NLD won a landslide victory in a 1990 general election but the military never allowed parliament to convene. In September 1998 the NLD established the CRPP after despairing of even opening a political dialogue with the ruling military.
The military, which has declined to set a timetable for a return to democracy, reacted harshly to the move, and stepped up its repression of the opposition, detaining dozens of would-be members of parliament and other NLD members and overseeing the resignations of many more opposition party members in circumstances that suggested coercion.
The announcement of Aye Tha Aung's detention said that in addition to being the secretary of the CRPP, he was also a delegate representing ethnic-based political parties such as the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, the Rakhine Democracy League, the Mon National League for Democracy and the Zomi National Congress. Only the Shan group is still legally registered.
There was no official announcement of Aye Tha Aung's detention. Such incidents generally go unreported except in special cases where the government presses charges against the detained persons. Government comment on the detention was not available Wednesday.
BURMA
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE in Rangoon
Aye Tha Aung, a member of the party's 10-member representative committee, was arrested by police at his house on Monday night.
The party said it did not know why he was arrested or where he was being held. Military officials confirmed the arrest but said only that Mr Aye Tha Aung had been placed under "temporary custody".
Mr Aye Tha Aung is closely connected to three now-defunct ethnically based branches of the party, the Arakan League for Democracy, the Mon League for Democracy and the Zoemi League for Democracy.
The party said leaders of all three sections were already in jail.
Mr Aye Tha Aung is the first member of the party's representative committee to be arrested.
Nobel laureate Ms Aung San Suu Kyi was contained under house arrest between 1989 and 1995 and her movements are still severely restricted.
The party is allowed little more than to hold regular meetings in its headquarters in downtown Rangoon and is the target of a bitter political campaign by the Government.
Ten years ago this month, the party won a sweeping general election victory but the junta has refused to hand over power.
The committee was set up in 1998 to try to convene the 1990 parliament, a move that triggered a government crackdown which has crushed the party's ability to organise.
Hundreds of opposition activists and party members were arrested and government-sanctioned campaigns have multiplied calling for the party to be banned.
The representative committee includes party luminaries like Ms Aung San Suu Kyi and party deputy leader Tin Oo.
Mr Aye Tha Aung's arrest came a few weeks after Burma was castigated in a UN report for gross human rights violations and mistreatment of ethnic minorities in the country
.Abducted, soldier gets 'life sentence'
But friends don't believe he is alive
Junta hasn’t improved its behaviour, says Suu Kyi
THE Burmese government’s recent arrest of more than 40 people, mostly from the National League for Democracy youth wing, demonstrated the regime’s true colours, said NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
According to the transcript of an interview obtained from the Bangkokbased Alternative Asean Network on Burma yesterday, Suu Kyi dismissed claims by some observers that there have been signs indicating that overall conditions in Burma are improving and that the ruling junta has been behaving fairly well since the beginning of this year.
In the interview, Suu Kyi blasted the ruling generals for relentlessly violating human rights and resorting to a campaign of intimidation.
She urged the international community, especially the UN human rights conference in Geneva which ends today, to take note of the scale of abuses in the country.
She said that during the water festival earlier this month more than 40 people, most of them from her opposition NLD youth wing, were arrested without any charges. It is believed that they are being interrogated in the infamous Insein Prison.
The authorities usually make arrests at night during the holiday period when all the party offices are closed, so people cannot get in touch, she explained.
“But the fact that there is any kind of activity within the NLD seems to trouble the authorities. Sometimes I almost think it frightens them,” said Suu Kyi. “They really get into a terrible tizzy when we start reorganising our young people.”
She said the latest crackdown showed that so far as humanrights violations were concerned, the regime was not improving at all. “Well, the leopard certainly has not changed its spots,” she added.
Certain critics who are beginning to say something good about the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) had failed to acknowledge the continuing abuses against the Burmese people, she said, pointing out that the regime could not keep up its pretence of being good for long.
“I am afraid they [SPDC] have not kept up their good behaviour. I think it is a bit too much for them,” said Suu Kyi.
She admitted that Burmese were afraid of the regime, but praised those brave enough to carry on their work amid the climate of fear.
Lately, some quarters of the international community had grown restless with the stalemate and ineffectiveness of the junta’s harsh isolation policy and were aiming to nudge Rangoon into some sort of political liberalisation. Among them were Japan, Australia and Asean countries who believed in the merits of engagement.
Also, the gradual success of the International Committee of the Red Cross in gaining access to various prisons, detention centres and labour camps had given the proengagement camp a major boost.
The release of the interview followed the arrest of prominent NLD member Aye Tha Aung, who represented several ethnic parties on the 10person Committee Representing the People’s Parliament. Aye Tha Aung, who is being held in “temporary custody”, according to the authorities, is the first member of the senior committee to be detained. He is closely connected to three nowdefunct ethnically based branches of the NLD – the Arakan League for Democracy, the Mon League for Democracy and the Zoemi League for Democracy
The latest claim of arrests comes a month before the NLD marks the 10th anniversary of its crushing general election victory, which has never been recognised by the junta.
The Nation