Burmese General Denounces Nobel Peace Prize Selection

A top general of Burma’s military regime says the Nobel committee has tried to give credibility to political dissidents by awarding the peace prize to the “puppets” of Western nations.

Gen. Tin Oo, a senior member of the regime, did not mention any particular peace laureate, but his remarks Friday in a speech marking Armed Forces Day clearly included Burma’s pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 while she was under house arrest. Her party won national elections in 1990 but the regime never allowed parliament to convene.

Suu Kyi was released from house arrest last year, but the government recently has tightened its control of her activities. On Saturday, troops continued to block roads to her home, preventing her from holding a regular party meeting for the fourth straight weekend.

The 1996 Nobel Peace Prize went to two critics of Indonesia’s rule in East Timor, Roman Catholic Bishop Carlos Belo and exiled resistance leader Jose Ramos-Horta. Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony in 1975.

“The Nobel Peace Prize has been given to those who are opposing the government,” official media quoted Tin Oo as saying. “It has been used as a political instrument for incitement and also to popularize their puppets in the international arena.”

The prize was simply part of “a multi-dimensional war to dominate smaller countries using political, economic, diplomatic and psychological means,” he said.

Burma, also known as Myanmar, has been under military rule since 1962. Troops made a bloody crackdown on 1988 pro-democracy protests that had carried Suu Kyi, the daughter of the country’s independence hero, Aung San, to prominence.