Burma says no foul play in NLD prisoner's death ( MANBC ) September 20, 2002


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Burma says no foul play in NLD prisoner's death

Source : MSNBC / Reuters/ AP Rangoon, Sept. 20

Military-ruled Burma sought to head off potential criticism over the death of a prisoner from the pro-democracy opposition on Friday, insisting the detainee had died because of poor health.

''While serving his sentence...Aung May Thu recently suffered severe flatulence with hard constipation on 15th September,'' a government spokesman said in a statement faxed to Reuters.

Aung May Thu, 60, a senior member of Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition party, had been in jail since 1989.

He was recently transferred to a hospital for an eight-hour operation and died on September 17 of peritonitis, the statement said.

Aung May Thu was arrested in 1989 on charges of being linked to the banned Communist Party of Burma and sentenced to 20 year in prison. Although the sentence was commuted to 10 years, he was kept in prison under a law allowing indefinite detention of persons considered a threat to the state.

News of his death had already been reported by opposition sources, and publicized by opposition media outside of Burma.

The statement from the government spokesman's office, faxed to The Associated Press in Thailand, said Aung May Thu was transferred on Sunday from Tharawaddy Prison to a local hospital in Bago, 65 kilometers (40 miles) northeast of the capital, suffering from flatulence and constipation.

The next day he was sent to Rangoon general hospital where a team of specialists operated on him overnight, but he died several hours later.

The statement said the government was helping his family with "necessary humanitarian assistance."

The Irrawaddy online magazine, published in Thailand, reported that Suu Kyi attended Aung May Thu's funeral on Wednesday.

Under intense lobbying from the international community, Burma's generals released Suu Kyi from 19 months' house arrest in May. But around 250 members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) still languish in Burma's jails.

The NLD won elections in the impoverished Southeast Asian country in 1990, but have been denied power by the military.

Human rights groups say the military regularly tortures political prisoners and keeps them in poor conditions.

But the United Nations human rights envoy to Burma Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, who is due to visit the country on October 13, has said prison conditions have improved since the government started to allow Red Cross visits over the past two years.

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