Opposition Under Attack in Myanmar : Southeast Asia: The Burmese will soon vote in the first multi-party balloting in 30 years. But Western diplomats say the elections already ‘are not free and fair.’

BANGKOK, Thailand —  A month before the Burmese hold their first multi-party elections in 30 years, the hermit-like military government has launched daily attacks on the democratic opposition and given clear signs that it has no intention of surrendering power, no matter what the results of the voting, Western diplomats said Monday.

In a series of interviews, the diplomats said the elections “already are not free and fair” because there is no freedom of speech or assembly in Myanmar (formerly Burma), and the leaders of the opposition are either in jail or under house arrest.

Conceding that there are few meaningful contacts permitted between diplomats based in Myanmar and the Burmese people to gauge popular sentiment, one envoy nonetheless suggested there is evidence that if the elections were truly free, there is “no doubt” that the leading opponent of military rule, the National League for Democracy, would win the election for a people’s assembly.

The league’s leaders, Aung Sang Suu Kyi, the daughter of an independence hero, and Tin U, a former army chief of staff, have been under house arrest since last July.

The election is being held May 27 for the assembly, whose task will be to draw up a new constitution. The military government, known as the Supreme Law and Order Restoration Council, has indicated that it will not hand over power until a constitution acceptable to the military has been adopted.

The council seized power Sept. 18, 1988, after months of disturbances in which troops killed thousands of demonstrators, most of them students.

It quickly changed the official name of Burma to Myanmar.

Diplomats said the government’s concern over the strength of the democratic parties has been evident in a series of attacks in these closing days of the election campaign, stridently condemning politicians as corrupt and incapable of governing.

Some opposition figures were released from jail in late April, with the apparent hope that they would foment factionalism and splinter the opposition, a diplomat said.

The election is being conducted in an atmosphere extraordinary even by the ascetic standards of the Myanmar government. Western diplomats are not permitted to travel outside the capital. Journalists have been banned for nine months, and even Western tourists are being kept out during May.

Between 5,000 and 8,000 people rounded up last summer remain in prison, and arbitrary detentions of opposition figures are continuing, according to the diplomats.

In recent months, there have been mass relocations of people from Yangon (formerly Rangoon) to towns as far as 100 miles away. Diplomats said the forced relocations, involving at least 200,000 people in the capital, appear to serve the dual purpose of punishing the democracy movement’s constituency in the lower-middle classes and beautifying the city in a form of instant urban renewal.

The diplomats said it is unclear if provision has been made to allow the relocated people to vote in their new localities, which are described as being Spartan and malarial. The relocations have further embittered the people toward the government, they said.

“It’s the traditional Burmese belief that the people exist to serve the needs and whims of the leadership,” commented one envoy. “There is no sense of reciprocal obligation.”

The diplomats said a personality cult appears to have developed around Maj. Gen Khin Nyunt, the chief of military intelligence.

The U.S. Congress is currently considering legislation to ban imports such as teak from Myanmar to protest the country’s human rights violations and involvement with the opium trade.

Melvyn Levitsky, an assistant secretary of state for narcotics matters, recently charged during a tour of the area that the Myanmar government had a “collusive” relationship with major narcotics dealers, who are shipping more than 2,000 tons of opium to America each year.

In an effort to dispel this image, the Myanmar government on Monday held a “drug burning” ceremony attended by agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in which it was claimed that more than $500 million worth of seized narcotics was destroyed.