The prime minister in exile of Burma has told an Oireachtas committee that nearly one-third of the Burmese parliamentarians democratically elected eight years ago have been jailed by the military junta there.
Dr Sein Win became prime minister in 1990 after the National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won 82 per cent of the electoral vote. The military regime has not allowed the parliament elected then to convene. Last month the Inter-Parliamentary Union said that Burma leads the world in the repression of parliamentarians.
Dr Sein Win is a cousin of Aung San Suu Ky, who has spent the last six years under house arrest in Rangoon, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. She made five attempts to leave Rangoon last year, being forced every time by the military to return to her home. On the most recent occasion, she spent 11 days in her car in protest.
Speaking to the Oireachtas Human Rights Committee yesterday, Dr Sein Win said murder, torture, rape and illegal imprisonment continued in Burma on a daily basis. A UN special rapporteur has been refused entry to investigate the situation.
Some 150 out of the 485 elected parliamentarians belonging to Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy have been arrested. Others have been forced to resign by threats from the military that their wives and children will be imprisoned, will not be allowed to work or attend school.
Dr Sein Win said the military's strategy appeared to be to destroy the opposition party so that when international opinion finally forced them to negotiate, they would be able to say that it was not a functioning party anymore.
He said only 27 per cent of Burmese children now attend primary schools - compared, for example, with 80 per cent in Cambodia. All the universities and high schools were closed in 1996 after an antigovernment demonstration in one university; the high schools have since been allowed to reopen.
The committee passed a motion to ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, to urge that Aung San Suu Kyi's British husband, who is in London and is seriously ill with cancer, should be granted a visa to visit her. Dr Sein Win will address a public meeting at the City Arts Centre, Moss Street, Dublin, at 8 p.m. on Thursday.