From: Human Rights Coordinator <hrcoord@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: soc.rights.human
Date: 08 Nov 92 06:19 PST
Subject: Update on Burma
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1476700768:000:3333
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!hrcoord    Nov  8 06:19:00 1992


From: Human Rights Coordinator <hrcoord>
Subject: Update on Burma

From @pucc.Princeton.EDU:SEASIA-L@MSU.BITNET Fri Nov  6 20:19:58
1992

RTw  11/06 0056  BURMESE OPPOSITION SPURNS JUNTA CONVENTION

    By Angus MacSwan BANGKOK, Nov 6, Reuter - Burma's ruling
    generals have announced a national
convention to plan a new constitution, but they will be talking
only to themselves, spurned by groups ranged against them, exiles
and guerrillas said on Friday.
    The military junta announced on official radio on Thursday
night the convention would begin on January 9.
    Main opposition groups denounced it as a sham which they would
have no part in.
    The move was the latest in a series made by the State Law and
Order Restoration Council (SLORC) in recent months designed to
show it is easing the grip in which it has held Burma since troops
suppressed a pro-democracy uprising in 1988.
    International human rights groups have dismissed the changes
as cosmetic and say the junta's record of repression remains
appalling.
    Bo Hle Tint, a minister in the exiled National Coalition
Government of the Union of Burma, said the junta had no right to
call a convention.
    "This is none of their business. They have no mandate from the
people," he said.
    The coalition was set up in December 1990 by opposition
politicians who fled persecution to link up with ethnic guerrillas
and other dissidents based in the jungle on the Thai border.
    The junta should honour the results of the May 1990 election,
won by the National League for Democracy (NLD) but ignored by the
generals, Bo Hle Tint said.
    "We are the representatives of the people," he said.  Hla Pe,
    an elected NLD member now exiled in Bangkok, said the junta
    was
playing for time.
    Some NLD members who remained in Burma might attend but they
had been cowed by intimidation and manipulated, he said.
    "This is another atttempt by the SLORC to trick the Burmese
people and the world," he said.
    There appeared no chance whatsoever that the opposition's most
potent figure, Aung San Suu Kyi, would be involved.
    The 1991 Nobel Peace Prize is now in her fourth year under
house arrest and has been stripped of her leadership of the NLD.
The junta says it will release her if only she gives up politics.
    Dissident students have not even been invited, said Aung Naing
Oo, foreign affairs secretary of the All-Burma Students Democratic
Front.
    Because of their role in the front line of the struggle for
democracy their views must be heard, he said.
    A few Rangoon-based students may attend the convention --
    "sons and daughters of the SLORC," he said.
    A Karen guerrilla officer simply laughed when asked about it.
    The Karen, strongest of an array of ethnic minority armies,
    are battling a
government campaign against their border strongholds despite
Foreign Minister Ohn Gyaw's statement at the United Nations in New
York last month that military operations were suspended as a
gesture of reconciliation.
    The convention is only to lay the ground for drafting a new
constitution.  Diplomats say the process could take years and even
then there is no guarantee of multi-party elections.
    The junta has also stated that the army will continue to play
a prominent political role in the future.
 REUTER AM JS GD