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Myanmar Students Held U.N. Staff -



Subject: Myanmar Students Held U.N. Staff - yet, another SMART move...!

Tuesday October 19 4:12 AM ET

Myanmar Students Held U.N. Staff

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Myanmar dissident students held five U.N. staff 
captive for
several hours at a refugee camp near the Thai-Myanmar border before agreeing 
to release them,
officials said today.

Around 50 students locked one French and four Thai staff from the U.N. High 
Commissioner
for Refugees in a meeting room at the Maneeloy holding center, 90 miles west 
of Bangkok, on
Monday.

Janvier Deriedmatten, an agency representative, said the students agreed to 
release the workers
after holding them for over two hours, following negotiations with local 
Thai authorities.

``Nothing dramatic happened. There was no physical violence, no threats, but 
we will have to
make sure that the next time there is a way out for our staff,'' he said.

The incident comes less than three weeks after militant Myanmar students 
stormed the Myanmar
Embassy in Bangkok and took some 38 hostages at gunpoint.

Komet Daenthongdee, governor of Ratchaburi province where the camp is 
located, said the
students involved in Monday's incident were angry because they had missed 
out on their $20.50
monthly allowance.

They failed to collect their stipends because they were outside the camp 
when the money was
paid. Refugees at Maneeloy took part in peaceful demonstrations in front of 
the Myanmar
mission in central Bangkok for so-called Nines Day, which fell on Sept. 9, 
or 9-9-99. On that
day, dissidents hoped but failed to stir up an uprising inside Myanmar 
against the regime.

Three weeks later, five student radicals demanding democracy in Myanmar and 
release of
political prisoners stormed the embassy, holding it for 26 hours before 
releasing all captives in
return for safe passage to the Thai-Myanmar border.

Some 1,000 asylum-seekers stay at Maneeloy. They are mainly former students 
who helped
lead the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar, also known as Burma, and who 
fled a bloody
clampdown by the Yangon military in 1988.

Earlier Stories

      Myanmar Students Hold U.N. Staff (October 19)

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