From: "freecubanow" <freecubanow@hotmail.com>
Subject: Rangoon regime ranked as one of the world's worst / Telegraph
Date: Wednesday, July 21, 2004 9:46 AM
Rangoon regime ranked as one of the world's worst
By Our Foreign Staff
(Filed: 21/07/2004)=20
The Burmese regime is one of the very worst in the world. Its junta
has visited a litany of horrors on a people whose endurance for
suffering can seem endless: arbitrary arrest and abuse, forced labour,
child labour, military press gangs, rape and pillage, dire poverty, an
Aids epidemic, malnutrition and malaria.
=20
Between 1,300 and 1,400 political prisoners are being detained, of
whom the democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is only the most prominent.
Criticism of the state is punishable by 20 years in prison.
In its 2004 Freedom in the World survey, Freedom House, the respected
New York-based think tank, gave Burma bottom-ranked scores with Cuba
and North Korea.
This week Ms Suu Kyi was denied permission to attend the annual
commemorations of the assassination of her father Aung San, Burma's
independence hero, but her status gives her some protection.
Donna Guest, of Amnesty International, said: "Torture during
interrogation is still a big problem along with trials with no or very
few basic rights."
Pressure groups and activists collate a steady drip of atrocities.
According to Altsean Burma, a regional pressure group, seven political
prisoners in Bassein jail began a hunger strike in September calling
for the release of Ms Suu Kyi and other political detainees.
They said prison authorities stopped giving water to the strikers and
a few days later, after non-political inmates joined the protest,
security forces open fired on the prisoners, killing at least four.
The military controls every branch of the state. Freedom House's
previous annual report said: "The junta rules by decree, controls the
judiciary and commits human rights abuses with impunity. Military
officers hold most cabinet positions."
Decades of military misrule have transformed Burma from one of the
wealthiest nations in south-east Asia at independence in 1948 to one
of the poorest, despite huge natural resources, including wood,
gemstones and oil, and once being the region's rice basket.
http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/survey2004.htm
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=3D/news/2004/07/21/wburm12=
1.xml&sSheet=3D/news/2004/07/21/ixworld.html
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