By WAI MOE, The Irrawaddy
March 3, 2008

Three Rangoon men were arrested on Friday for casual comments they made about the Burmese referendum and general election, according to sources.

A businessman who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Irrawaddy on Monday that three car brokers at the Rangoon car market were taken away by Burmese special police after they made casual comments in support of the main opposition National League for Democracy.

“Members of the USDA [Union Solidarity and Development Association, the pro-junta mass organization] came and talked about the new constitution and referendum at the car market on Friday,” said the source.

“Then the brokers told the USDA members in joking that they ‘should not waste their time’ because in the final days people would vote as recommended by the NLD [led by Aung San Suu Kyi]. Later the special police came and arrested three of them.”

The Burmese military government has scheduled a referendum on a draft constitution in May and a general election in 2010, as the fourth and fifth step of its “road map to democracy” process.

Aung Thein, a lawyer in Rangoon, said the arrests may be the first such cases since the junta passed a new decree on February 26 forbidding negative comments about the referendum, which allows a sentence of up to three years imprisonment.

“But we don’t know if the people arrested will be charged under that decree,” he said.
He said that authorities have an option to charge people who speak out against the constitutional process under emergency acts 3 and 4 under decree 5/96 announced in 1996, barring negative comments. Anyone found guilty under that decree could receive up to 20 years in prison.

Meanwhile, five people, mostly family members of 88 Generation Students group members, were arrested last week.

They are Thanda Win, the wife of Mya Aye, a leader of the 88 Generation Students group; Hla Moe, the husband of  88 group member Mie Mie;  Kanet, the brother of Marky, an 88 group member; and Naing Htwe and May Mie Lwin.

No reasons for the arrests are known at this time among the Rangoon activist community.