Burmese Authorities Arrest Two Prominent Dissidents

Roundup Continues in Wake of Protests

Two prominent Burmese dissidents have been detained, exiled activists said yesterday, as the military government continues to hunt down and arrest dissident monks and other organizers of September's pro-democracy demonstrations.

The two are a monk who goes by the name of U Gambira, a leader of the All-Burma Monks Alliance who has been on the run since September, and Su Su Nway, a member of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party who has consistently challenged the junta in recent years.

Su Su Nway, 35, was detained yesterday as she was putting up leaflets next to a Rangoon hotel where U.N. human rights investigator Paulo Sergio Pinheiro was staying. He arrived in Burma on Sunday to survey human rights violations in the wake of a bloody crackdown by the junta, but his presence in the country, which the ruling generals call Myanmar, did not deter troops from continuing to take more prisoners.

The government has acknowledged that at least 3,000 people have been arrested and that an undisclosed number have been released.

Su Su Nway, a labor activist, stood up for labor rights in defiance of the military government two years ago and has been in and out of jail several times. She is best known in human rights circles for winning a historic court ruling against local government officials in 2005 by invoking international labor standards.

Her activism began when government officials forced her and her neighbors to repair a village road without pay. In bringing her complaint, she relied on a 1999 law that allowed reporting on labor rights abuses to the International Labor Organization. The army often uses civilians as porters and forces them to walk ahead of soldiers to test for mines.

Su Su Nway's legal victory was the first against the junta's long-standing practice of forced labor. But in its aftermath, Su Su Nway, who suffers from a heart condition, was sentenced to 18 months in prison on charges of defaming authorities. Her struggle was recognized last year with the John Humphrey Freedom Award, named after a McGill University law professor. She had quietly remained in regular contact with journalists until her cellphone was disconnected in early September.

Because of her frail condition, she went underground during the recent crackdown, emerging only rarely. On Oct. 27, she laid flowers at the spot where Japanese journalist Kenji Nagai was gunned down by security forces while recording video of demonstrators in Rangoon.

News of U Gambira's arrest -- there are conflicting accounts of when he was detained -- began filtering out of Burma on Monday to democracy groups in the West. The monk had published an opinion piece in The Washington Post on Nov. 4 in which he discussed how Burmese had become "galvanized as never before" in confronting the generals. He also analyzed the global response to the repression that followed the uprising.

"Video and the Internet have allowed the world to witness the brutal response directed by Gen. Than Shwe, Burma's de facto ruler and military leader," he wrote. "Once again the streets in Rangoon and Mandalay ran red with the blood of innocent civilians seeking to save our country from the moral, social, political and economic crises that consume us."

News of the arrests came as the U.N. envoy for Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, said in a briefing to the Security Council that the government had assured him that it "would release more detainees and that no more arrests would be carried out."

Gambari also said he would begin a search to replace Charles Petrie, the senior U.N. representative in Burma, whom the junta has ordered expelled. The decision to find a replacement means the world body has effectively yielded to Burma's demand that the diplomat leave the country.