Foreign Desk
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

500,000 Burmese Demand Release Of Political Prisoners
In an extraordinary act of defiance, more than half a million Burmese have signed a petition demanding the military regime release political prisoners and talk to the democratic opposition. “We have got 535,580 signatures,” one of the activists involved, Ant Bwe Kyaw, said. “It’s an inspiring act of defiance,” Debbie Stothard of pressure group Altsean-Burma said. Burma’s military junta is estimated to hold about 1,100 political prisoners.
— The Daily Telegraph
Six Soldiers Identified in Skull-Desecration Photos
BERLIN — The German army has identified six soldiers who were involved in the desecration of human remains while serving in Afghanistan in 2003, Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said. The army yesterday started a probe after Germany’s biggest-selling newspaper, Bild, published five photos, one of which showed a skull attached to a military vehicle while another showed a soldier baring his penis next to a skull. They were taken by members of a German patrol near Kabul and the origins of the remains are unknown.
— Bloomberg News
S. Korea Closes Border To Officials From North
BEIJING — South Korea yesterday announced its first sanctions on the North following the U.N. resolution condemning Pyongyang’s nuclear test. The Unification Ministry, which handles North-South relations, said it would ban any North Korean officials suspected of having links to their communist state’s nuclear and other weapons programs from entering the country. It also dismissed as “unreasonable” a threat by the North that it would regard any sanctions as a “declaration of confrontation” and would take “counter-measures.”
— The Daily Telegraph
India Outlaws Spousal Abuse and Marital Rape
NEW DELHI — Wife-beating was declared a crime in India yesterday as legislation was introduced to combat the high levels of domestic violence. Some 7,000 women are killed in dowry disputes every year in India, with a further 18,000 raped and 175,000 suffering other minor crimes, according to India’s national crime records bureau. But under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, women are to be given substantial protection, including rights to financial compensation, when they suffer domestic abuse. The law also criminalizes marital rape, which, until yesterday, was not an offense unless the wife was under 15 years of age.
— The Daily Telegraph