Junta Releases Activist after 2 Months of Interrogation

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

RANGOON — Burma’s military authorities freed a prominent member of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party Thursday after holding him for two months for questioning.

Party spokesman Nyan Win said that Ohn Kyaing, a 64-year-old former journalist, was well after being sent home from Rangoon’s notorious Insein Prison.

He said Ohn Kyaing was asked about the party’s cyclone relief effort and how it was funded, as well as other matters. He had been chairman of the party’s relief committee set up after Cyclone Nargis devastated the country in May, killing more than 84,000 people and leaving another 54,000 missing.

“I am very happy that Ohn Kyaing was freed but it is very unfair that he was held in prison for such a long time without committing any crime,” Nyan Win said.

Ohn Kyaing joined the party led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi after a long career in journalism and ran successfully for parliament in a 1990 general election.

The NLD came out first in the polls, but the ruling junta refused to honor the results and would not let Parliament convene. Instead they stepped up arrests and harassment of the opposition.
Suu Kyi, the party leader, has spent more than 13 of the past 19 years under house arrest.

Nyan Win said that since November more than 270 activists—more than half of them members of his party—have been given prison sentences ranging from two to 68 years.

Burma’s military, which has held power since 1962, tolerates virtually no dissent. It has ramped up its crackdown on dissent since Buddhist monks led pro-democracy protests in September 2007.

According to international human rights groups the government holds more than 2,100 political prisoners, up sharply from nearly 1,200 in June 2007, before the demonstrations.