UN Rights Envoy Visits Myanmar Jail, Monasteries

UN rights envoy visits Myanmar jail, monasteries

YANGON (AFP) — A top UN human rights official Monday visited Myanmar's notorious Insein prison as part of his probe into rights abuses and the actual death toll from the junta's suppression of pro-democracy protests.

Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, who has been allowed back into Myanmar by the regime for the first time in four years, is on a mission to uncover how many people were killed and arrested in the September crackdown by security forces.

The UN expert, who arrived in Myanmar on Sunday, is also seeking to meet political detainees and investigate claims of abuses against ethnic minority groups before leaving the country on Thursday.

Pinheiro visited the Insein jail outside Yangon for about two hours, Myanmar's state television reported in the evening news. He was accompanied by UN and government officials, and escorted by police, witnesses said.

Neither the Myanmar news nor a statement by the UN revealed whether the envoy had actually met any inmates.

"He is expecting to interview detainees before the end of his mission and receive further details on their records," the UN said in a statement.

The UN expert left the country in 2003 after learning his meeting with a political prisoner in Insein had been bugged.

Pinheiro also visited two monasteries, met government officials and went to see a police command headquarters and a technical college in Yangon where detainees were held during the demonstrations, the UN said.

Human rights groups have called on the envoy to pressure the junta to release all political prisoners. Amnesty International on Friday estimated that 700 people arrested over the recent protests were still in detention, although the government said only 91 of the 3,000 originally rounded up were being held.

Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was secretly held at Insein in 2003. At the time, former political prisoner Ko Aung told the BBC the British-built facility was known as the "darkest hell-hole in Burma."

Journalist Win Tin, an advisor to Aung San Suu Kyi, and Min Ko Naing, who led pro-democracy protests in 1988 and was arrested this August after his group protested at rising prices, are among its most famous current inmates.

Pinheiro also held talks with senior Buddhist monks on Monday, the UN said, but did not reveal any details.

A Myanmar official confirmed that earlier Monday the envoy visited the Ngwekyaryan monastery in South Okkalapa, a satellite town of Yangon.

In September, witnesses said troops opened fire on crowds protesting at their treatment of the monks during a raid at the monastery, killing eight.

Buddhist monks were at the forefront of the protests, which began in August in response to a spike in fuel prices but swelled in the following weeks into the biggest anti-government demonstrations the junta has faced since 1988.

The government maintains 10 people died but diplomats and dissidents have put the number far higher.

Pinheiro will travel Tuesday to the new capital Naypyidaw, 400 kilometres (250 miles) north of Yangon, the UN said. A Myanmar official has said he will meet Prime Minister Thein Sein there.

On Sunday Pinheiro met officials of the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon. The gilded shrine is the most sacred in Myanmar and has traditionally been the rallying point for anti-government protests, including the most recent ones.

National hero General Aung San in 1946 demanded independence from Britain at the shrine and in 1988 his daughter Aung San Suu Kyi called for democracy there during mass protests against the regime, which has ruled here since 1962.

Pinheiro's visit comes just days after a mission by UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari, who pressed the generals to establish a dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi and move towards democratic reform.

Gambari's visit ended last week with the United Nations declaring that progress had been made. On Friday, Aung San Suu Kyi met a junta official and members of her political party, the National League for Democracy.

Political analysts say the generals have allowed the UN visits to reduce pressure on them ahead of the annual summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which opens in Singapore on Sunday.