Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Sun, 27 Dec 1992 16:47:40 PST
From:         Coban Tun <tun@QUARK.SFSU.EDU>
Subject:      UN-Barred from the Burmese Dissident

News below is a little old now but better late than never..

RTw  12/15 0508  U.N. INVESTIGATOR BARRED FROM BURMA DISSIDENTS

    By David Brunnstrom
    BANGKOK, Dec 15, Reuter - A United Nations investigator has accused Burma's
military government of barring him from meeting detained dissidents during a
visit to assess reports of widespread human rights violations.
    U.N. Human Rights Commission special rapporteur Yozo Yokota went to Burma
last week to try to visit prisons and detention centres and dissidents,
including Nobel Prize-winning opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi who has been
under house arrest in Rangoon since July 1989.
    Just days before Yokota's visit, which ended on Monday, two dissidents died
from injuries inflicted in detention, a diplomat based in the Burmese capital
told Reuters.
    Yokota wrote to Burmese Foreign Minister Ohn Gyaw to protest against the
government's obstruction of his mission.
    "In addition to being prohibited from establishing direct contact with any
of the political leaders deprived of their liberty, direct contact with many of
the people of (Burma) useful to my mandate, was made impossible," said a copy
of the December 14 letter made available to Reuters on Tuesday.
    "...during the course of my visit, several persons wishing to make direct
contact with the Special Rapporteur or persons whom the Special Rapporteur
requested to contact, were reportedly visited by members of the intelligence
services and told not to establish or receive contact with the Special
Rapporteur and the accompanying United Nations staff members," it said.
    The letter noted that under a March 1992 Human Rights Commission resolution
"threats or intimidation against witnesses or persons wishing to cooperate
with the United Nations are prohibited.
    "This resolution further states governments should take all steps necessary
to protect the lives and physical integrity of these persons," it said.
    "I urge the government of (Burma) to take the necessary steps to comply
with the above cited resolution," Yokota's letter concluded.
    Yokota's visit was made after the U.N. General Assembly's social and
humanitarian committee approved its toughest resolution yet on human rights
abuses by Burma's ruling junta of generals who took power in 1988 by crushing
a pro-democracy uprising.
    The December 4 resolution expressed "grave concern" at reports of torture
and arbitrary executions, continued detentions of a large number of people for
political reasons and oppressive measures against ethnic and religious
minorities.
    Because of the junta's lack of cooperation in past investigations and
continued reports of violations, the United Nations has for the first time
publicised its findings on Burma.
    Yokota, a Japanese professor, issued a report last month saying the
commission had received more than 1,000 allegations of arbitrary arrests,
abductions, rape, torture, forced labour and murder by the junta.
    His report and the resolution drew attention to the more than 250,000
Moslems who have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh telling of rape, murder and
torture at the hands of the Burmese military.
    Burma's U.N. delegate Kyaw Min dismissed the U.N. resolution as "flawed in
every respect." A senior foreign ministry official denounced Yokota's report
as based on propaganda by dissidents.
    Yokota is currently in Bangladesh to visit camps housing the refugees.
    His visit to Burma was made amid warnings about Aung San Suu Kyi's health
from her British husband, Michael Aris, who said late last month that she was
refusing to take food from her captors and was running out of funds to sustain
herself.
    While the junta says it has released several hundred political prisoners
since April, Western diplomats estimate hundreds remain in detention. They say
more than a dozen have died from injuries inflicted in custody since the
military took power.
    The Rangoon-based diplomat said the latest of these was Aye Lwin, 38, an
activist who had been held in the notorious Insein Prison on the outskirts of
Rangoon.
    He died from internal injuries early this month after being beaten by a
prison superintendent named Mo Hein, the diplomat said.
    "After he was beaten, he started vomiting blood. He was given no medical
treatment and died in his cell," he said.
    Two prisoners who complained about his treatment were also beaten and Aye
Lwin's body was moved to the prison hospital to make it appear that he had
died there, the diplomat said.
    He said that in late November a 23-year-old activist, Maung Zaw Tun, died
from internal injuries inflicted in jail.
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