Myanmar police raid homes as manhunt intensifies

By Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's military junta tightened the net around leaders of a rare string of protests on Thursday, raiding homes of known activists and their friends and distributing their photographs in a Yangon-wide manhunt.

"I know they've been after me since our protest on Tuesday," Suu Suu Nway, an outspoken critic of the ruling generals, told Reuters by telephone. "I heard they have sent pictures of three women activists, including me, to several of their offices."

The other two are believed to be Ma Mee Mee and Ma Nilar, two well-known women members of the so-called "88 Generation Students Group", the still influential leaders of a mass uprising against the former Burma's military rulers in 1988.

Fourteen people from Tuesday's demonstration, videotaped and photographed by undercover government spies, had now been picked up, Suu Suu Nway added.

The 34-year-old was roughed up by the junta-backed gang that broke up the march against soaring fuel prices and has gone into hiding since, apart from a brief hospital check-up.

"I'm not afraid of being arrested but I'm not feeling well at the moment," she said.

The opposition National League for Democracy said more than 100 people had been arrested in the week-long crackdown, one of the junta's fiercest since troops were used to crush the 1988 unrest, in which up to 3,000 people were believed killed.

On Wednesday night, police and plainclothes officials raided homes in the north of the former capital, apparently looking for the few well-known activists to have evaded capture.