The Nation-Burmese students hold st

[hlaing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

The Nation
August 25, 1998

Burmese students hold street protest

STUDENTS risked their first street protest against Burma's military regime
in nearly two years Monday, while Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi bowed to
failing health and ended a 13-day roadside standoff with the government. 

Suu Kyi's political party, the National League for Democracy, had urged her
to come home from a bridge 32 kilometres outside Rangoon, where her van had
been stopped since Aug 12. 

Suu Kyi's doctors said she was suffering from kidney and urinary problems,
low blood pressure and dizziness when they were last allowed to see her on
Friday. Government officials said she had returned to the capital of her
own free will in their care. 

Tin Oo, an NLD vice chairman, reported that the doctors had told Suu Kyi
Monday that she was suffering from dehydration and possible hypoglycemic
shock. She was persuaded to return voluntarily. ''Her health hasn't
improved,'' Tin Oo said. 

Earlier in Rangoon, some 200 students, watched by about 400 bystanders,
staged the first anti-government protest since December 1996. It appeared
to catch authorities by surprise and lasted an hour before riot police
arrived. 

Blocking traffic at Hledan Junction near Rangoon University, they waved red
flags with a yellow fighting peacock, the symbol of the democracy movement
and Suu Kyi's party. 

''Down with the totalitarian government!'' they chanted. ''Our cause must
succeed!'' 

They ran down side streets as soon as the first truckload of riot police
appeared. Police chased them, but government officials said later that none
had been arrested. The intersection was closed to traffic. 

A government spokesman said that most of the students were NLD sympathisers
and said that Suu Kyi's vehicle had visited the protest site on the way
back from the bridge hours after the demonstration ended. 

The protest marked the most open act of public discontent this month, which
has marked the 10th anniversary of a national uprising against military
rule that was eventually crushed by the army, when as many as 3,000 people
died. 

Suu Kyi, 53, whose movements are tightly restricted, made a fourth attempt
on Aug 12 to drive to the western city of Bessein to meet party members. As
in previous attempts, she was stopped at a checkpoint and not allowed to
proceed. 

Home Minister Col Tin Hlaing Monday met two members of the NLD's central
executive committee. He had sought a meeting with party Chairman Aung Shwe,
who sent the lower-level members instead. 

The NLD said that the two sides ''expressed their respective points of
view''. The government called the talks ''frank and cordial''. Neither
disclosed the contents. 

Suu Kyi had set a deadline of last Friday for the government to convene the
parliament elected in 1990 in which the NLD won 82 per cent of the seats.
The military refused to honour the vote. The deadline passed without
action. 

In Bangkok, members of allied groups of exiled Burmese students protesting
in front of the Burmese Embassy were caught off guard Monday as the group
leaders were arrested by Thai police. 

They were uncertain about their next move after learning that Suu Kyi had
ended her standoff and following requests by Thai authorities for them to
move their protest away from the embassy's front gate to avoid disrupting
normal operation of the embassy. 

Fourteen protesters have been arrested by Thai police since Sunday for
overstaying in Bangkok. Most of the student protesters travelled from the
holding centre in Ratchaburi, where they hjad been issued one-week permits
to travel to Bangkok, but most of the permits expired while they were
staging the protest since the beginning of this month. 



Associated Press, The Nation