BURMA EASES DISSIDENT'S ISOLATION
Author: Associated Press
Date: Sunday, April 26, 1992
Page: 2
Section: NATIONAL/FOREIGN
RANGOON, Burma -- The military government said yesterday it will allow
the family of a detained opposition leader and Nobel Prize laureate, Aung San
Suu Kyi, to visit her and announced it had freed a former prime minister and
11 other political prisoners.
The announcements on state radio came one day after the ruling military
junta said political detainees who pose no threat to state security would soon
be freed.
One US scholar questioned the sincerity of the junta's actions, saying it
could be making conciliatory gestures merely to placate criticism of its human
rights record.
Burma has effectively been under martial law since September 1988, when a
military coup ousted a one-month-old civilian government. The coup came after
almost a year of unrest.
Aung San Suu Kyi, a leader of the opposition National League for
Democracy, has been under house arrest since July 1989 for allegedly
''endangering the state."
Despite her detention, her party won a landslide victory in parliamentary
elections on May 27, 1990, but the ruling junta refused to recognize the
results.
Aung San Suu Kyi received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her nonviolent
activism.
State radio said her husband, Michael Aris, a British professor, and their
two sons would be allowed into Burma to visit her. It was not clear whether
any conditions were attached.
Speaking from Cambridge, where he teaches at Harvard University, Aris said
Burmese officials called yesterday to inform him that he could visit.
"They said that if I apply for visas I shall get them," he said. "I'm
still trying to clear the decks and make plans as soon as possible, of course.
It is very good news. We've waited a long time for this."
Among the political prisoners released was former Prime Minister U Nu, 85,
who had headed a parallel government formed after the 1988 coup. U Nu was put
under house arrest in December 1989.
Four other members of the parallel government who had been under house
arrest were also released. Seven other political prisoners serving terms of 10
years or longer were released. All were members of the Patriotic Old Comrades
League, an ally of Aung San Suu Kyi's party.
This week, Gen. Saw Maung, who had headed the junta since its founding,
resigned for health reasons. He was succeeded by Gen. Than Shwe.
Burmese radio also announced last night that Than Shwe was appointed
supreme commander of defense services. He is already prime minister and
defense minister.
Josef Silverstein, a professor at Rutgers University and a specialist on
Burmese politics, said the changes will reduce international "pressure on the
regime." "But I don't believe for a minute that there's a . . . bit of
sincerity in this," he said.
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