U.N. Envoy Seeks The Truth In Myanmar

A U.N. human rights envoy arrived Sunday in Myanmar on a mission to get inside the country's prisons to determine the numbers of people killed and detained since the regime's crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the U.N.'s independent rights investigator for Myanmar, had been barred from visiting the country since November 2003. He has said he will abandon his current visit unless he gets full support from the junta.

"If they don't give me full cooperation, I'll go to the plane, and I'll go out," he said recently after the government gave him a green light to visit the country for five days.

Pinheiro has a history of prickly relations with the ruling generals. He abruptly cut short a visit in March 2003 after finding a listening device in a room at a prison where he was interviewing political detainees. Later that year, he accused the junta of making "absurd" excuses to keep political opponents in prison.

But he sounded positive about his return to the tightly controlled Southeast Asian nation on Sunday.

"I hope I will have a very productive stay," Pinheiro told reporters at his hotel in Yangon, Myanmar's largest city, adding, "I'm just very happy to be back here after four years."

The human rights envoy has submitted a proposed itinerary for his visit to the Myanmar government, which was still being "fine-tuned," said Aye Win, a U.N. spokesman in Myanmar.

Pinheiro's trip comes three days after the departure of U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari, who attempted during a six-day visit to kick-start talks between the junta and the pro-democracy opposition.

As a result of Gambari's trip, detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was allowed to meet the leaders of her opposition party on Friday for the first time in three years. Suu Kyi said through a party spokesman she was "very optimistic" about the prospects of dialogue with the government.

Pinheiro said he was encouraged by Suu Kyi's meeting.

"I am very happy," he told AP Television News in Bangkok before boarding his flight for Yangon. "Ambassador Gambari did good work, and I'm very happy she was able...to meet with her colleagues."

The regime cracked down on Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party after it won elections in 1990. Instead of honoring the election results, the military stepped up a campaign of arrest and harassment of the party members, and eventually closed most of its offices.

Suu Kyi has been in government detention for 12 of the past 18 years, and continuously since May 2003.

The junta, which has long been criticized of human rights abuses, has come under renewed international pressure since it crushed pro-democracy demonstrations led by Buddhist monks in September.

The government says 10 people were killed in the Sept. 26-27 crackdown, though diplomats and dissidents say the death toll was much higher. Thousands were arrested, with the events triggering intense global condemnation.

Amnesty International submitted a letter to Myanmar authorities Friday expressing concern over "grave and ongoing human rights violations" committed since the crackdown, including "widespread arbitrary detentions, hostage-taking, beatings and torture in custody and enforced disappearances."

The London-based human rights group said about 700 political prisoners remain in custody and accused the regime of 72 disappearances. It demanded that Pinheiro be given full and unrestricted access to the country's detention centers.

Pinheiro cited unidentified sources as saying last month that between 30 and 40 monks and 50 to 70 civilians have allegedly been killed.

The discrepancies show the need for an independent and thorough investigation, he said.

After getting initial permission last month for the visit, Pinheiro said he would demand access to prisons and try to determine the number of people killed and detained by the government.

The U.N. Human Rights Council condemned the crackdown at an emergency session Oct. 2 and urged an immediate investigation of the rights situation in Myanmar.