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10 MORE NLD MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT A



Media Release
September 7, 1998


         AUTHORITIES ARREST 10 MORE NLD MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT, 
                       FORCE STUDETNS TO SIT EXAMS

Burma's military authorities yesterday arrested 10 Members of
Parliament (MP) from the National League for Democracy (NLD) amid
the party's call for parliament to be convened.

Among those arrested is 84 year-old Thakin Khin Nyunt who
recently arrived in Rangoon to participate in the NLD's 'Peoples'
Parliament'. The name of one of the other nine MPs is known - he
is U Soe Win.

Thakin Khin Nyunt is from Magwe Division, north of Rangoon, and
he won the seat of Yenangyaung 1 in the 1990 election. He was one
of the leaders of the 1938 nationwide strike against the British
and a founding member of the Dobama Asiayone Association, the
main resistance organisation against British rule. 

The 10 arrests bring the number of NLD MPs detained since June
this year to 93.

Meanwhile, in Rangoon this morning military authorities forced
some 2,000 students protesting at Rangoon University's Hlaing
Campus to sit their exams, according to sources in the capital.

Riot police entered the campus at around 8:30 this morning and
forced the students from the Rangoon Institute of Technology
(RIT) to board waiting buses. The students were then driven to
nearby RIT to sit their exams. 

Riots police had blocked the roads leading to Hlaing Campus for
the past few days and last night officers from the Military
Intelligence Service (MIS) arrived with teachers to persuade the
students to end the protest and sit their exams. The MIS officers
threatened that they would use force to break the protest up.

The students began their protest on Wednesday last week demanding
the postponement of exams, an improvement in the quality of
teaching, and the release of RIT students arrested since the
December 1996 demonstrations, including prominent student leader
Min Ko Naing.

All Burma Students' Democratic Front (ABSDF)

For further information call 01 253 9082, 01 654 4984.