Burma Myanmar
By Ian MacKinnon in Bangkok
5:04PM GMT 21 Nov 2010
Burmese authorities ordered more than 80 Aids patients and staff to leave a shelter hours after they gave Aung San Suu Kyi, the freed democracy leader, a rapturous welcome.
A throng of about 600 turned out to see Aung San Suu Kyi at the clinic in the city's eastern suburbs Photo: AP
The patients and staff, who need permits renewable monthly to live at the shelter on Rangoon's outskirts as they are not from the former capital, were told to go after the Nobel laureate's high-profile visit.
Few are in any doubt the authorities' notification that the 82 patients would have to leave or face legal action was a direct result of Ms Suu Kyi's trip last Wednesday and the regime's efforts to stymie her.
"We have been allowed to renew our permits in the past," said Zeyar, who uses only one name and is a member of Ms Suu Kyi's disbanded National League for Democracy (NLD) party. "I think the authorities want to pressure us because of [Mrs Suu Kyi's] visit."
A throng of about 600 turned out to see Ms Suu Kyi, 65, at the clinic in the city's eastern suburbs, where she called for more medical assistance for the shelter's 82 inhabitants, which include young children.
It came four days after she was freed without strings from seven years of house arrest - the latest detention of 15 of the past 21 locked away - when she pledged a "peaceful revolution" while seeking dialogue with the autocratic generals who rule.
The simple shelter, a wooden house and a two-storey structure with thatched walls, was set up by Phyu Phyu Tin. A prominent member of the NLD's youth wing, he wanted to cater to a few of the estimated 240,000 Burmese living with Aids.
Many Aids sufferers had lived in monasteries and were nursed by monks in the past. But since the 2007 monk-led uprising, the so-called "Saffron Revolution", patients are no longer allowed to stay in monasteries.
Htin Aung, a patient at the Rangoon clinic, told the BBC Burmese Service the shelter which provided food and medicines was his slender lifeline and only option.
"I don't think we can move out," he said. "In our home towns we see all the patients die. Here we have systematic treatment and we have medicines."
Burmese Junta same ol' same ol'. It's mainly drug money from opium production that buys their guns, pays their soldiers and maintains their rule.
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