Myanmar junta accuses top activists of terrorism

By Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's military junta accused 13 detained dissidents of terrorism on Saturday, suggesting it would impose long jail sentences on some of those suspected of being behind two weeks of protests against soaring fuel prices.

"The terrorists will be exposed and legal action will be taken against them," the former Burma's ruling generals said in a rare public statement on state-run radio and television.

The announcement, accompanied by a lengthy account of the group's alleged subversion, came a day after six people who ran a May Day labour rights seminar at the American Center in Yangon were sentenced to at least 20 years for sedition -- the maximum penalty for plotting against the state.

Most of the 13 are leaders of the so-called "88 Generation Students Group" which spearheaded a nationwide uprising against decades of military rule in 1988. Up to 3,000 people are thought to have died when troops were sent in to crush the movement.

Min Ko Naing, the most prominent dissident figure after detained opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, is among the 13.

Family sources were checking rumours sweeping through opposition ranks that Ko Jimmy, one of those arrested in a series of midnight raids on Aug. 21, had died in police custody.

Some analysts said the rumours might be a junta ruse to flush out his wife, Ma Nilar, who has gone into hiding. The couple have a four-month-old daughter.

"NOTHING TO DO WITH SEDITION"

Coming so close to the harsh sentencing of the labour activists, the announcement suggests the junta is determined to squash the dissent that has mushroomed since last month's shock hikes in fuel prices -- some by as much as 500 percent.

Four of the labour activists received 20 years for sedition, five years under "illegal association" laws, and three years for immigration offences, lawyer Aung Thein said. The other two were found guilty only of sedition and given a 20-year jail term plus a fine of 1,000 kyats -- about 75 U.S. cents.

"What they did at the May Day ceremony was explain labour rights to the workers," Aung Thein, who was forced to quit as the group's attorney due to police harassment, told Reuters. "It had nothing to do with sedition."

Families were allowed into the court, but the accused had no defence lawyer.

Continuing its hunt for a few prominent activists still at large, official papers also called on the public to keep their eyes open for "saboteurs", saying the government, people and army must unite to crush "the enemies within and without".

There were no reports on Saturday of any more fuel protests that have spread from Yangon to the centre and coastal northwest, and which are starting to involve monks, major players in the 1988 revolt.

This week, several hundred young monks seized 13 government officials and set fire to their vehicles in Pakokku, 130 km west of Mandalay, in an angry response to soldiers firing warning shots at a monks' protest march the previous day.

The crackdown, one of the harshest since 1988, has drawn withering criticism from the United States and European Union, and unusually strong words from Myanmar's Asian neighbours.

Even China, the generals' main trading partner and the closest they have to a friend, said it wanted to see "reconciliation and improvement in the situation".