Embargoed until August 11, 2003

Contact: Naw May Oo & Dr. Zarni(510) 685 4170; Dr. U Kyaw Win (303) 642 0880

POST-SANCTIONS BURMA: CHALLENGES FOR BURMA’S DEMOCRATIZATION

Exiled Burmese Dissidents Unveil New Strategies & Report on Resistance Underground

Friday, August 15, (10:00 AM – 12:00 noon)

Coronado B, West Tower Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina/Quinn’s
1380 Harbor Island Drive, San Diego, CA
(Site of the 16th Annual Asian American Journalists Association Convention)

San Diego, CA -- The Burmese exiled political leaders who just returned from
Burma and the country’s “liberated areas” will provide first-hand account of
the struggle between their democratic movement led by Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and the ruling junta and an update on the resistance underground inside Burma and abroad.

[We will be showing exclusive footage of the battle scenes between the ruling
junta and the freedom fighters and of Aung San Suu Kyi on her non-violent
organizing trail outside Rangoon prior to the bloody ambush by the regime.]

“We believe the American press deserves a truthful fist-hand account on the
situation inside Burma. Moreover, we will shed light on the resistance
movement which has been actively engaged in the battle to free Burma from
tyrannical ruling junta but until now has been little known outside Burma,”
said Dr. Zarni, founding director of US-based Free Burma Coalition, the world’s
largest network of Burmese dissidents and their supporters.

In the absence of Aung San Suu Kyi and her leadership because she has been
behind bars since the Burmese regime unleashed brutal attacks on her and her
supporters this May, concerned parties – governments and individuals – have come forward openly with “roadmaps for Burmese democracy” and/or simply offered the two opposing camps strategic advise on how to break Burma’s political deadlock.

These roadmaps and strategic advice are conspicuous in their disregard for the
key pillars of Burma’s democratic movement. They discount, in effect, the armed resistance waged by the country’s minority groups such as the Karen National Liberation Army, the Shan State Army, the Chin National Front, the Karenni National Progressive Party, the Arakanese Liberation Party, and the multi-ethnic All Burma Students’ Democratic Front.

“We are fighting not just for the freedom of the Karens but for all peoples of
the country,” said Naw May Oo, a legal scholar who works with foreign affairs
department, the Karen National Union (KNU) and has just returned from the Karen
state. She added, “We know from experience and history freedom is not going to be handed to any oppressed group on a platter. Black South Africans earned
their freedom under Mandela’s leadership. The Americans fought and won civil
rights battles under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Dr. U Kyaw Win, former publisher and editor of the first dissident publication
abroad The Burma Bulletin and an old friend of Aung San Suu Kyi, returned to
Burma earlier this year after 40 years in exile in the United States.
He says, “We greatly appreciate all the outpouring of sympathy and help we
have so far received from our friends, governments and citizens alike, since
May 30 bloody attacks in Burma.” Win added, “We, the peoples of Burma, are
not on political welfare. We are fighting for our own freedom at great
personal cost. With a little push from the international community, we can win our freedom back.”

Burma’s political exiles around the world are planning a solidarity march on 10
December 2003, the International Human Rights Day. Former President of the
Philippines and General Fidel V. Ramos will preside over a Burma summit to be
held in Southeast Asia in January 2004, which will follow the solidarity march.

Disclaimer: The Asian American Journalists Association is not affiliated with the Free Burma Coalition and that this briefing is not part of the AAJA’s convention. It is independently convened to provide the American press an update and first-hand account on the situation inside Burma, as well as the worldwide resistance movement.