UN investigator asks Myanmar free protesters

GENEVA, Aug 31 (Reuters) The United Nations investigator on human rights in Myanmar called on the military rulers in Yangon today to free the more than 100 people arrested in a crackdown on fuel-price protests over the past 10 days.

The investigator, Brazilian law professor Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, told a Geneva news conference that detainees had been badly beaten and that some may have been tortured.

''I am calling on the Myanmar authorities to immediately release these people who were only expressing their democratic right to express their views openly,'' he said.

Many of the protesters have declared a hunger strike over police refusal to allow one of them with a broken leg to have medical treatment, according to an activist leader in Yangon.

Pinheiro reports to the U.N. Human Rights Council and is currently preparing a report on the Myanmar situation although he has not been allowed into the country since 2003.

He said he would be contacting the Council, which opens a new session in Geneva in late September, to express his concern about the latest events. He also called on countries around Myanmar to help overcome what he called a crisis there.

Pinheiro said ''the repression'' of the past few days was in contradiction with the Myanmar government's pledges that it wants to work to a new democratic constitution through a National Convention which is currently underway.

He said he had reports that police were not only seeking other protesters who had escaped the original crackdown but was also searching for members of the families of the detainees already held.

Reuters RS GC2200