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Suu Kyi's whereabouts unknown |
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September 23, 2000
YANGON, SEPT 22 (AP) - A top aide to pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has not returned home after he and Suu Kyi were prevented from leaving the capital by train in their latest confrontation with Myanmar's military junta, a source said Friday. In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said the 1991 Nobel Peace laureate was "forcibly removed" from the train station and that her whereabouts remain unknown. She called the actions by the military government an "outrage." On Thursday, Suu Kyi and several colleagues from her National League for Democracy including the party's vice chairman Tin Oo were allowed to go to the railway station but were kept from boarding four consecutive trains for the 12-hour, 560-kilometer (350-mile) journey to Mandalay, the country's second-biggest city. Suu Kyi and the others were told that all tickets to Mandalay had been sold out, a party official said. Dozens of Suu Kyi's supporters were also hauled away in police trucks. Four hours later, in the early hours of Friday, the vehicles in which Suu Kyi and Tin Oo had arrived were seen leaving the station accompanied by unmarked police cars. The convoy went to Suu Kyi's house but it was not immediately clear if the leaders were in the cars and whether they had been forcibly removed. The station was deserted. However, Tin Oo's wife said her 77-year-old husband had not returned home and was worried, a source close to the NLD said. Reporters were not allowed to go to Tin Oo's house. The source did not dismiss the possibility that Tin Oo was at Suu Kyi's house. The junta, which has little tolerance for opposition activity, disapproves of Suu Kyi's efforts to conduct party work in the countryside and has physically prevented her from doing so on several occasions. Her last confrontation with the government was Aug. 24 when she was blocked from driving to a southern town and later put under virtual house arrest along with the entire top leadership of the NLD from Sept. 1 to Sept. 14. In Washington, Madeleine Albright said in a statement: "This blatant, heavy-handed action is only the latest outrage committed against Aung San Suu Kyi and other party leaders by Burmese authorities." "It is unacceptable," she said, adding that she was "appalled" at the junta's treatment of Suu Kyi and the NLD. She called the restraints on the party "an affront to free peoples everywhere." Suu Kyi won the Nobel Prize for her struggle for democracy in Myanmar, also known as Burma, which has been ruled by its military continuously since 1962. The current generals took power in 1988 after crushing a nationwide uprising for democracy, killing thousands of people. Suu Kyi was kept under house arrest from 1989 to 1995, and her movements have remained heavily restricted. Although Suu Kyi's party won national elections in 1990 in a landslide, the military government refused to honor the results. Suu Kyi last tried to travel by train, also to Mandalay, in March 1996, when authorities disconnected her carriage, saying it had developed mechanical problems and could not make the journey. On Wednesday, Myanmar's Foreign Minister Win Aung told the United Nations that his government has been under "unfair scrutiny" and political pressure from other nations while it is establishing its own kind of democracy. |