960404

Burma increases

prisoners sentences

for passing

information

BANGKOK: Burma's military government has given 21 political prisoners stiff increases in their sentences for passing information on the conditions in their jail to the United Nations, an international human rights group said.

Amnesty International said in a report received by Reuters on Thursday that the 21 included four members of dissident leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD).

The 21, originally imprisoned between 1989 and 1991, were all given additional sentences of five to seven years at a closed trial in Rangoon's Insein prison on March 28, where they were already serving sentences, it said.

"Amnesty International is particularly concerned that the prisoners have apparently been punished for passing information to the United Nations," the London-based rights group said.-Reuter