BANGKOK POST: ALLEGED BURMESE REBELS NABBED IN SAMLOT

19.1.00

BANGKOK POST

 

PHNOM PENH

AP

Two anti-government activists from Burma were arrested after

allegedly attempting to solicit Cambodian training to use against

their country's military junta, officials said yesterday.

 

The two men were taken into custody last week in Samlot, a

battle-scarred town on the Thai border, after apparently asking

former Khmer Rouge rebels to teach them guerrilla tactics.

"They were seeking help in training and supplies from our

regional military to fight the Burmese government," Im Dara,

deputy commander of military police in Battambang province, said

by telephone.

 

Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Samlot were among the last to

surrender, negotiating their integration into the Cambodian army

in late 1998.

 

The small town, about 320km northwest of Phnom Penh, is

considered the birthplace of peasant resistance to the royalist

Cambodian government of the 1960s.

 

The Cambodia Daily identified the dissidents as Mon Say and Kao

Sik, names which if correct are likely to belong to members of

one of Burma's ethnic minorities. Provincial authorities did not

know what resistance group they are affiliated with.

 

Some of the resistance groups in the past have obtained weapons

from Cambodia, where there is a huge supply of armaments - a

legacy of more than two decades of war which ended only recently.

The weapons were smuggled across Thailand to the Burmese border.

Many Burmese dissidents, in addition to tens of thousands of

people displaced by fighting, have taken refuge in Thailand.

A Burmese embassy official in Phnom Penh said yesterday that

Ambassador Tint Lwin planned to contact the Cambodian government

about the arrested dissidents, but declined to comment further.

The fight against Burma's ruling generals came under wide

international scrutiny in October when a small group of student

activists staged a spectacular raid on the Burmese embassy in

Bangkok.

 

They briefly took embassy staff and tourists hostage before

fleeing to the Burmese-Thai border.