April 28, 2008 - CHIANG MAI, Thailand: Burma's military junta is taking harsh steps to ensure a new constitution keeping it in control of the country will be approved in next month's referendum.
Civil servants and soldiers have been ordered to vote for the charter, threatened students with expulsion if they vote against it, arrested opposition activists and banned foreign monitors.
The regime said in February that a referendum would be held on May 10 to avert criticism of its suppression of September's pro-democracy protests, in which Buddhist monks led thousands of Burmese in Rangoon.
The new constitution - first promised 14 years ago - proposes multi-party elections, but activists say it will provide no more than a veneer of democracy.
It allows the army to retain a role in the government indefinitely and bars from politics any citizen who has been married to a foreigner, a provision aimed at the Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who married a Cambridge lecturer, Michael Aris, in 1972. He died in 1999.
Suu Kyi's political party, the National League for Democracy, won Burma's last election in 1990. The junta rejected the result and placed Suu Kyi under house arrest for 12 years.
Her party says its leaders have been intimidated, their houses raided and that farmers were threatened with nationalisation of their land if they failed to vote yes.
Sixty people were arrested earlier this month for wearing T-shirts urging a no vote. Military officers and high-ranking officials have reportedly been warned they will be dismissed if areas under their control do not cast a majority affirmative vote.
Government officials said the regime planned to make teachers and civil servants vote in the presence of senior military officers.
"This is clear intimidation," said Win Min, an exiled Burmese political analyst. "It violates the basic right to vote in secret."
The Union Solidarity and Development Association, a right-wing organisation loyal to the military, will administer the referendum and count the votes.
Pleas from the UN special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, to allow international observers to monitor the poll have been rejected.
Telegraph, London - SMH
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