Friday June 6, 11:48 PM

U.N. envoy pushes Myanmar on prisoners

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations human rights expert for Myanmar urged the military junta on Friday to investigate reports that its soldiers shot dead a number of prison inmates during the recent devastating cyclone Nargis.

Tomas Ojea Quintana, who reports to the world body's Human Rights Council, also called for aid to be allowed to flow freely to victims of the storm and said he had heard that critics of a referendum held in its wake had been arrested.

The Argentine lawyer, making his first report to the Council, said some 1,000 prisoners at the town of Insein had been forced inside a hall after their jail's zinc roofs were torn off in the storm on May 2, and many panicked.

"In order to control the situation, it is reported that soldiers and riot police were called in and opened fire on the prisoners in that area. A number of prisoners were allegedly killed during the operation," his 16-page report said.

A Thailand-based rights group said at the time soldiers and police had killed 36 prisoners to quell a riot. Ojea Quintana did not cite any total for the deaths.

"The authorities should conduct a thorough and transparent investigation to clarify the facts and identify the perpetrators of those arbitrary killings," he said.

Ojea Quintana urged the Myanmar authorities to honour an agreement with the U.N. to "allow international humanitarian workers and supplies unhindered access to the country and particularly to the areas affected" by Nargis.

FALSE PICTURE

On Friday, the Myanmar military accused "unscrupulous" citizens and foreign media of giving a false picture of the effects of the cyclone, which left 134,000 dead or missing and 2.4 million people in desperate need of help.

Dozens of Irrawaddy delta villages, some visited by Reuters, have yet to receive any relief assistance since the storm.

Ojea Quintana, who succeeded Brazilian lawyer Paulo Sergio Pinheiro as Myanmar investigator on May 1, said people reported detained for protesting over the constitutional referendum, were among 1,900 political prisoners in the former Burma.

These included monks rounded up after protests last September. All should be freed, he said, starting with Aung San Suu Kyi, opposition leader and Nobel laureate under house arrest or in prison for nearly 13 of the last 18 years.

"Given her responsibility as National League for Democracy (NLD) General Secretary, her arrest affects the political rights of many other members of the NLD and of the people of Myanmar," his report added.

Ojea Quintana noted that his predecessor Pinheiro had reported after a rare visit to Myanmar last November that at least 31 people had died in the crackdown on monk-led protests.

The new investigator urged the authorities in Yangon to set up a mechanism to trace people reported missing since then and voiced hope he would also be allowed to visit the country soon.

In March, the Council unanimously condemned Myanmar for what it called "systematic violations" of fundamental freedoms.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Robert Evans)