BBC-East Asia Today.-September 2nd

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East Asia Today.
September 2nd 1998

?BURMA - Largest sit-in protest yet 

Riot Police Take up Positions as Students Stage Demonstrations

Reports from Burma say hundreds of students shouting anti-government
slogans have staged a demonstration inside the campus of the Rangoon
Institute of Technology. Diplomatic sources say about five hundred students
were involved, though some reports put the figure higher. 

Hundreds of riot police took up positions outside the campus and the
students were eventually taken away by bus to another campus where they are
reported to be spending the night. There were no arrests. One of our East
Asia analysts, Alice Donald, looks at what lies behind this rare act of
defiance: 

For a generation of young people in Burma, education has been a lesson in
bitter disappointment. In the last decade of military rule, schools and
colleges have been closed more than they have been open. Student
frustration has often boiled over into anger, most recently in 1996 when
the junta again closed down the main universities. Their shutters have
remained locked ever since.

But now a small number of students are daring to put their heads above the
parapet. Today's gathering at the Rangoon Institute of Technology and a
similar demonstration at Rangoon University last week are the first since
1996. They are thought to have been organised by a clandestine student body
inside Burma [the ABFSU] which had said it would stage lightning protests.
These students represent a new generation of activists who are anxious to
highlight their grievances without provoking violent confrontation. Stones
were thrown at last week's protest - a sign, perhaps, of how hard it could
be to contain young people's frustration, or, more worryingly, of attempts
by agent procateurs to discredit the demonstrations.

The students may have decided to seize the moment because of wider
political pressures on the junta. The opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi,
has called for the parliament elected in 1990 finally to be allowed to
meet, a demand which is likely to strike a chord among the students. They
are also known to be disillusioned about the exams they were called to sit
last month. These descended into farce, with questions and answers widely
circulated, and invigilators told to overlook cheating. 

Students have played a key role at moments of volatility throughout the
century, from the independence hero Aung San, a student leader of the
1930s, to the mass uprising in 1988. This rich vein of student radicalism
makes the junta especially worried about the prospect of sustained student
unrest. 

The regime has sought to pre-empt this by decentralising higher education
away from the major cities to prevent student activism from reaching a
critical mass if the universities reopen. The authorities have also built
new campuses across the river from the centre of Rangoon, accessible only
by bridge, in an apparent attempt to contain the students in the event of
any unrest.

But ultimately the generals are going to face a dilemma. If they allow
universities to reopen they risk the prospect that young people, cheated of
their education and hopes, may seize the chance to mobilise against them.
If they do not, then Burma will have yet another lost and angry generation,
and its aspirations to develop economically will remain a hollow dream.