Yangon - Myanmar authorities charged 14 members of
opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy
Friday who called for her freedom on her 63rd birthday last month.
The 14, who shouted slogans and released 63 sparrows outside their
party headquarters on June 19, were charged with destabilizing the
state and forming an illegal gathering.
Witnesses said the protest was quickly broken up when officials
spilled out of government cars that whizzed to the scene. Suu Kyi
heads the NLD, although she has spent 12 of the past 18 years under
house arrest.
Suu Kyi, the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has been in near
complete isolation since May 2003, after government thugs attacked
her and her supporters in Depayin township, central Myanmar, leaving
several dead. One May 27, Myanmar's junta extended her house
detention for another year.
Political activists in Myanmar have used Suu Kyi's birthday to
highlight the lack of democratic progress in the country, which was
hit in May by Cyclone Nargis.
The All Burma Monks' Alliance, one of the organizers of anti-
government protests last September, appealed last month to the
European Union Council, for example, to refocus on Myanmar's ongoing
political plight.
The junta, headed by Senior General Than Shwe, drew international
ire for its brutal crackdown on Buddhist monks last September and
more recently for its callousness in handling disaster relief for
some 2.4 million people affected by Cyclone Nargis, that smashed
across the country's central coastal region on May 2-3 leaving at
least 133,000 people dead or missing.
Last year's protests, the biggest for a decade and a half, were
preceded by bold street demonstrations by activists upset by rising
fuel and transport prices or the continuing lack of freedom. The
government is keeping several hundred activists in prison, often for
years, sometimes releasing a few or arresting more.
The junta proceeded to hold a referendum in May on a new
constitution that enshrines military control, even in the face of the
devastation caused by Cyclone Nargis. Analysts were skeptical when
the authorities reported that 90 per cent of the electorate voted and
over 90 per cent approved the military-backed constitution.
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