AFP-Myanmar campus sealed off amid

[hlaing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Myanmar campus sealed off amid student unrest, UN chief calls for talks
Sat 05 Sep 98 - 07:40 GMT 

YANGON, Sept 5 (AFP) - A downtown Yangon university was sealed off by riot
police Saturday after three consecutive days of unrest, witnesses said, as
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Myanmar authorities to move towards
democracy and hold a dialogue with the opposition.

Police numbers had been reduced and security remained low-key after Friday
night passed peacefully at the Hlaing campus, witnesses said.

"There isn't much going on, but a few hundred students are sticking it out
and there might be another flare-up," a foreign diplomat here said.

"But there is no hint of confrontation. The police are standing guard
outside, the students are inside."

Students at Hlaing -- numbering between several hundred and several
thousand according to different estimates -- shouted anti-government
slogans during a peaceful protest Thursday night, witnesses said eralier.

Authorities responded by formally closing the campus, which largely serves
as a preparatory school for other tertiary institutions, they added. Most
of the protestors were from outside Yangon and were staying in dormitories
on the campus, which are now also to be closed.

The gates to the campus were locked by police, with some 1,000 students
remaining inside.

Some 300 police remained around the campus, but another western diplomat
said it was a "not a big deal at the moment."

"They've got their shields and their truncheons but we haven't seen any
guns and their numbers aren't that big. I think the government wants to
play it peacefully."

The students were angered by arrangements for their courses, which have
only restarted in recent weeks after universities across the country were
closed following campus unrest in December 1996.

Students were given only a few days of classes to prepare for examinations,
which at Hlaing are scheduled for September 7, in what foreign diplomats
say is a bid to rid the system of those involved in the 1996 unrest and
restart the education process.

Political tensions are rising in Myanmar and the leading opposition
National League for Democracy (NLD) of Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu
Kyi has vowed to convene the parliament elected in 1990 but which has never
been allowed to sit.

The opposition won the 1990 polls by a landslide but the junta has refused
to relinquish power.

Some 3,000 students shouting slogans against Myanmar's junta staged a
protest at Hlaing Wednesday as another estimated 800 students chanted at
the nearby Yangon Institute of Technology. Both protests ended peacefully.

Those demonstrations were the biggest since the 1996 unrest. Riot police
broke up a smaller protest outside Yangon University on August 25 and
arrested dozens of people, according to witnesses.

Another protest was staged later that day at Yangon Institute of
Technology, during which rocks were thrown and riot police mobilised.

The latest stand-off came as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Myanmar
authorities to take steps towards democracy and to hold a dialogue with the
main opposition leader, his spokesman said in New York.

UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said that at a meeting with the junta's foreign
minister on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in
Durban, South Africa, Annan "pressed him on the need for the democratic
liberalisation of Myanmar."

He also called for "a sustained and effective dialogue with Aung San Suu
Kyi," Eckhard said.

Eckhard did not mention Annan's attempts to send a high-level envoy to
Myanmar which has been rebuffed by the authorities.

The husband of Aung San Suu Kyi, meanwhile, accepted on her behalf an
honorary degree in Australia and said he believed the country's military
rulers were gradually moving towards dialogue.

Michael Aris accepted the Doctor of Laws from the University of Melbourne,
saying the military in Myanmar would not have allowed his wife back into
the country if she had visited Australia.

"How pleased they would have been if she left and how sad for her
supporters," he told a graduation ceremony Saturday.

"Although it is nearly three years since I was last allowed by Burma's
military rulers to see her, and many months since I could speak to her by
telephone, last year she was able to ask me to represent her here today."

Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest for six years until 1995. 

Aris, an Oxford University fellow, said the conferring of the degree was
recognition of his wife's attempt to establish the rule of law in Myanmar.

"Every day of the week in Burma's official media, Suu Kyi is vilified,
slandered, taunted, ridiculed and insulted -- in the cowardly way adopted
by soldiers who have lost their sense of honour and dignity, she has no
right of reply."