Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Mon, 11 Jan 1993 19:33:13 PST
From:         Coban Tun <tun@QUARK.SFSU.EDU>
Subject:      Burmese opposition denounces SLORC convention

UPn  01/08 0958  Burmese opposition denounces SLORC convention

   MANERPLAW, Burma (UPI) -- A coalition of ethnic and dissident groups Friday
denounced as a "sham" a national convention in Rangoon which is to draw up a
new constitution and appealed to the United Nations to take action against the
military junta.
   The regime "just wants to show the world that it has reconciled in drafting
a constitution to set up a civilian government, but it will not solve Burma's
problems," Gen. Bo Mya, president of the National Council of the Union of
Burma, told a news conference.
   The jungle-based NCUB groups four armed ethnic and dissident groups opposed
to Rangoon's four-year-old military regime, which calls itself the State Law
and Order Restoration Council (SLORC).
   SLORC on Saturday is to open a much heralded national convention in Rangoon
to lay down the principles for a new constitution which it says will allow for
"genuine multi-party democracy" but also ensure "the leading role of the armed
forces in the national politics of the country in the future."
   "We...strongly denounce this sham national convention," the NCUB said in a
seven-point resolution issued after a four-day meeting in Manerplaw, the
group's jungle headquarters in northeast Burma.
   "We...appeal to the U.N. to take action, in accordance with international
laws, against the SLORC, which has perpetrated increasingly the crimes of
torture and brutality against the people's representatives," said the
resolution.
   The NCUB said it was preparing its own constitution and would send it along
with Friday's resolution to the United Nations secretary general in New York.
   "All problems in Burma would be solved if the United Nations supervises
elections and transfers authority to civilians," Brang Saeng, chairman of Kachin
Independence Organization, an ethnic insurgent group, told the newsconference.
   The Manerplaw meeting was also attended by 47 representatives from 32
minority groups. The participants and villagers, some carrying portraits of
detained opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung Sang Suu Kyi,
held a rally in the town to denounce the SLORC convention.
   About 30 Burmese dissidents also protested in front of the Burmese Embassy
in Bangkok Friday.
   A total of 702 delegates are to take part in the Rangoon convention, drawn
from among deputies elected in May 1990 multi-party elections and from the 10
legally existing political parties as well as from the main national races,
workers, farmers, technocrats, public services and the intelligentsia.
   "Most of those who are taking part in the convention are SLORC puppets,"
said Bo Mya.
   SLORC took power in September 1988 and then brutally suppressed pro-
democracy protests that began several months earlier.
   Free elections in May, 1990 were won overwhelmingly by the opposition
National League for Democracy, despite the detention a year earlier of NLD
leader Suu Kyi. SLORC has refused to allow the party to take power.
   Then Defense Minister Gen. Tan Shwe replaced ailing SLORC chairman Gen. Saw
Maung last April, and the regime has since launched a campaign aimed at
improving its international image. The opposition and much of the world
community have dismissed the moves as largely cosmetic.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU