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Alert

Poet arrested, his whereabouts unknown

(Mizzima News/IFEX) - According to his family, the whereabouts of Khant Min Htet, a poet and the layout designer for the Rangoon-based "Ahlinkar Wutyee Journal", who was picked up by the police on 22 October 2009, are still unknown.

The Special Branch (SB) of the police arrested Khant Min Htet from his home in Thaketa Township. Four days after his arrest, a four-member SB team searched his home and seized several CDs. They also seized a computer hard disk from his office at the journal.

"They just said that they were taking him in for questioning but we still do not know his whereabouts. The family is terribly worried," the poet's father Maung Sein Ni, who is the editor-in-chief of "Padauk Pwint Thit", told Mizzima.

The poet's family believes that his arrest has something to do with politics but said the authorities did not disclose anything about it.

The Thailand-based Association for Assistance to Political Prisoners-Burma (AAPP-B) said that at least 41 political activists, including members of the Cyclone Nargis volunteer relief workers group "Lin Let Kye", were arrested in Rangoon in October.