Burmese opposition plans to boycott General Elections

Press, 24 September 1988, Page 11

Burmese opposition plans to boycott General Elections

NZPA-Reuter Rangoon Burma’s military rulers, still cracking down on popular dissent, say they are going ahead with planned General Elections despite an opposition refusal to take part.

Soldiers have killed about 180 people described as “destructive elements” since the Army seized power on Sunday, Radio Rangoon said. Western diplomats, doctors and opposition figures say the death toll is closer to 1000 and that most of those killed were unarmed demonstrators calling for democracy.

Government first to stop all the shooting and restore the country to its previous state when we could at least have proper democratic demonstrations, freedom of expression,” Aung San Suu Kyi, aged 43, the daughter of an independence hero, Aung San, said after their meeting. An aide to former

arian, Ne Win, who is considered the decisionmaker behind the Army’s action. The Army continued house-to-house searches in central Rangoon looking for pro-democracy leaders and literature and warning people to go back to work. Weeks of strikes in almost every industry and Government department have crippled Burma’s economy. Diplomats and other witnesses said harsh treatment was being meted out to some citizens. Radio Rangoon said workers had returned to their jobs at the Mandalay Railway Corporation and that a train was able to leave Burma’s second city for Pyinmana on Thursday afternoon. Reports of fighting between students and soldiers continued to be received from Mandalay, which was totally under the control of monks and students for weeks before the Army moved. There was no sign of a return to work in Rangoon, which was described by a Western ambassador as fairly peaceful on Thursday “but it is the peace of the cemetery.”

' “As soon as there is peace and tranquility and law and order in the country, democratic multi-party General Elections will be held,” Brigadier Khin Nyunt, director of the Army’s intelligence service, told a group of foreign military attaches on Thursday. “The defence forces ... have no wish whatsoever to take control of State ■power,” he was quoted as saying by an official on the radio. “What they have done is to lend a helping hand to the people so their desire for a genuine multi-party democracy will be fulfilled.”

Prime Minister, U Nu, who is 82 and was Burma’s last democratically elected head of Government, said he also would refuse to join in the elections. U Nu, who was overthrown in a 1962 military coup that led to a quarter century of militaristic socialist rule, was ailing and under doctors’ care, the aide said. Khin Nyunt said the elections would be held as soon as possible. “Once the elections are successfully completed, the defence forces will systematically hand over State power to the party that wins,” he said. The opposition maintains, and diplomats in Rangoon agree, that the Army has staged a false coup designed to keep power in the hands of the leaders of the ousted Burma Socialist Programme Party, including the long-ruling authorit-

Khin Nyunt met attaches hours after the prominent opposition figures, Aung San Suu Kyi, General Tin Oo and Brigadier Aung Gyi, decided to reject a request from the military Government that they take part in the polls. “We think it is up to the

Population: 37 million square miles ’ illiteracy rate: 40 percent ’lrifaht lOO per 1.'.000-,.. Jive births - Life Expectancy: Male - 51 years, female - 55 years <■ GDPt $6 billion GDP per capita: $165 Military: 180,000 troops .j'

BACKGROUND H Burma was controlled by Britain | between 1824 and 1937, before | gaining its independence. In 1962, the Burmese democracy was toppled by Ne Win, who held power until 1988. Under Ne Win's control Burma moved toward socialism. The economy has been plagued with troubles for decades. Student demonstrations throughout 1988 has lead to massive riots with thousands of people killed and arrested.

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