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Myanmar detains voters opposed to coming referendum

Myanmar’s junta is intensifying its campaign of intimidation against dissidents and conducting a propaganda drive to ensure its new constitution gets passed in a referendum next month, opposition leaders said yesterday.

At least 60 people have been arrested in Sittwe, capital of northwest Rakhine state, since last week’s traditional New Year celebrations for wearing T-shirts urging people to vote “no” in the May 10 plebiscite.

“More than 30 have been released but at least 20 are still in detention, and the arrests are still going on,” said Ko Thein Hlaing, a senior member of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) in Rakhine.

The NLD, whose leader, Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, remains under house arrest, is leading the campaign to reject the constitution, which has been drafted over the last 14 years by an army-picked committee.

The draft constitution is now available in many bookstores in Yangon, albeit at a price of nearly US$1 — far beyond the means of most people in the country.

Than Than, a 45-year-old housewife, has no plans to splash out for the hefty 194-page law.

“We don’t even need to read that book. Even a housewife like me has enough experience under military rule. I think it was just prepared to secure their power,” she said.

BOYCOTT

The NLD boycotted the process because of Aung San Suu Kyi’s detention and a refusal to accept some of the main clauses of the charter, in particular those that guarantee the army 25 percent of seats in parliament and the right to suspend the constitution at will.

Other opposition groups are also pushing for the country’s 53 million people to reject the charter, most notably the “88 Generation Students” who led a brutally crushed 1988 uprising against decades of military rule.

In addition to the Sittwe arrests, NLD spokesman Nyan Win said one party official had been arrested in Yangon for putting up a “no” poster, and several other party members had been beaten or assaulted for campaigning.

Mindful of 1990, when they allowed an election only to suffer a humiliating defeat — which they then ignored — the generals are also pulling out all the stops to ensure the charter passes.

State-run newspapers have been telling people how to vote.

“To approve the state constitution is a national duty of the entire people today,” the New Light of Myanmar, the junta’s official mouthpiece, blared in a headline.

DISSING DISSIDENTS

Inside, the paper carried a commentary accusing dissidents of being “the axe-handles and mouthpiece of the colonialists.”

Amid the tense atmosphere, people were weighing up their choice in the first poll to be held in Myanmar in 18 years.

“People are so stubborn. They should be aware that if we vote ‘Yes’, the military will step down in two years, if not it will take another 10 years,” a Myanmar engineer said.
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