RANGOON, Burma - A UN human rights envoy entered Burma for the first time in four years yesterday on a mission to uncover how many people were killed and detained since September's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.
Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the UN's independent rights investigator for Burma, has said he is determined to gain access to the country's prisons and detention centers as part of an investigation into wide-ranging allegations of abuse committed by the military regime.
Pinheiro had been barred from the country since November 2003. He submitted a proposed itinerary to the ruling junta before arriving in the country for a five-day trip, but it was still being "fine-tuned," Aye Win, the UN spokesman in Burma, said last night.
"I hope I will have a very productive stay," Pinheiro told reporters after flying into Rangoon.
Pinheiro has a history of prickly relations with the ruling generals. He abruptly cut short a visit in March 2003 after finding a listening device in a room at a prison where he was interviewing political detainees. Later that year, he accused the junta of making "absurd" excuses to keep political opponents in prison.
Accompanied by authorities, Pinheiro made his first stop in the town of Bago, 50 miles north of Rangoon, the UN said in a statement. Buddhist monasteries in Bago were among those targeted by the crackdown after monks joined antigovernment street protests.
Pinheiro then returned to Rangoon to meet officials at Shwedagon Pagoda, the country's most revered shrine and a flash point of unrest during the protests.
The junta, which has long been criticized for human rights abuses, has come under renewed international pressure since crushing the demonstrations. Burmese authorities have said 10 people were killed when troops opened fire on peaceful protesters in Rangoon on Sept. 26 and 27. Diplomats and dissidents, however, say that the death toll was much higher and that an unknown number of people remain in custody.
