| Families seek ICRC help to find detained activists
Sep 12, 2007 (DVB)—The families of detained 88 Generation Students leaders have asked the International Committee of the Red Cross in Burma for help as they continue to try to locate the activists.
Daw Nyunt Nyunt, the mother of 88 Generation Students leader Pandate Htun, told DVB today that the families of Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi, Ant Bwe Kyaw, Ko Mya Aye, Pyone Cho and Ko Jimmy have asked the ICRC to help them find out where the arrested men are being held.
Most of the top leaders of the 88 student group were arrested late last month for staging several protests over the government’s decision to increase fuel prices by up to 500 percent.
Daw Nyunt Nyunt said that while the ICRC continues to be denied access to Burma’s prisons and detention facilities by the government, the international rights group has promised to help.
“The ICRC said they were facing difficulties with access but they also said they would do their best to try to help us,” Daw Nyunt Nyunt said.
“They asked us to submit a formal letter to them asking for help so we wrote to them saying that our sons had been detained since August 21 and we want the government to tell us where they are being held,” she said.
Daw Nyunt Nyunt said several family members of the detained men went to Insein prison on Monday to find out if the student leaders were being detained there. She said prison officials refused to give them a straight answer.
“At first they said our sons weren’t there . . . but then they told us to go to the interrogation centres they were initially detained in to ask whether or not they had been sent to Insein,” she said.
Reporting by Maung Too
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