Foreign monitors, media barred from Burma polls
Naypyidaw, Oct. 18: Burma said on Monday it would not allow foreign election observers or media into the country for the next month’s election, which critics say is a sham designed to legitimise military rule.
“Regarding foreign observers coming here, our country has a lot of experience in elections,” said the election commission chairman, Mr Thein Soe.
He said the foreign diplomats and representatives from UN organisations based inside Burma would be allowed to observe voting in the November 7 poll.
“The diplomats are representatives of their countries. So we assume that it’s not necessary to allow other countries to observe separately.”
Overseas journalists would not be allowed into Burma for the vote because foreign news agencies already have staff based there, Mr Thein Soe, said in a briefing to diplomats and media in the capital.
No photography or filming would be allowed inside the polling stations to enable voters to “cast their votes freely,” he said.
More than 29 million people will be eligible to vote across 40,000 polling stations, with 3,071 candidates from 37 parties contesting the vote.
Meanwhile, detained pro-democracy leader, Ms Aung San Suu Kyi, wants to get a Twitter account once she is released from house arrest so she can get in touch with the younger generation after years of isolation, her lawyer said on Monday.
The 65-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner, who has been detained by the military government for 15 of the past 21 years, entered her latest period of detention in May 2003, before the Twitter era started.
Her detention expires on November 13, prompting speculation she will be freed though there has been no official announcement from the ruling junta.
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