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Myanmar's junta warns of attacks during key festival

Myanmar’s junta warned of increased terrorist acts during next week’s Water Festival and the national referendum, claiming two “terrorists” had been arrested last month, state media reports said yesterday.

In an article in the New Light of Myanmar, the government mouthpiece, said authorities last month arrested a member of the National League for Democracy (NLD) who had attended “explosives courses in a neighboring country.”

It said another alleged saboteur, sent into the country by Burmese student activists living abroad, had also been seized carrying explosives last month, and had been linked to past terrorist acts perpetrated in Yangon in 2004 and 2005.

The newspaper did not disclose the saboteurs’ identities.

“It has been learned that terrorists will target busy places and strategic places to create public panic,” the article said. “It can be deduced that those terrorists, if they had escaped arrest, would surely commit terrorist acts during the Thingyan [Water Festival] and in the places where public polls for the referendum will be held.”

Myanmar, like Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, celebrates its traditional new year on April 13 to 15, marking the advent of the rainy season.

The country will hold a referendum some time next month to vote on a new constitution that will legitimize the military’s dominant role and will exclude NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest since May 2003.
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