AP, 27 March 2000Myanmar Opposition Urges People To Increase ResistanceYANGON, Myanmar (AP)--At an opposition ceremony marking Myanmar's Armed Forces Day, party leader Aung San Suu Kyi urged people to keep up the struggle begun in 1988 to stage a revolution for democracy."We are now staging a revolution to free ourselves from military dictatorship and establish a democratic country," Suu Kyi told more than 300 members of her National League for Democracy at the modest ceremony Monday morning. "Based on democratic principles and with true political will, we are certain to achieve our goal," she said. Months of popular demonstrations in 1988 to bring down a military-backed regime which seized power in 1962 were violently suppressed by the army, which set up a new junta. The military allowed a general election in 1990 but refused to honor the results after it was won by Suu Kyi's party. "The resistance movement against the fascists in 1945 lasted a few months whereas the democracy revolution which began in 1988 in not over yet, but there is nothing to be discouraged about," Suu Kyi said at her party's headquarters. A party statement commemorated the occasion as "Resistance Day," marking when the army and people of Myanmar - then called Burma - rose up against Japanese occupation forces in 1945. The statement urged people to support the party in what it said was its strong determination to achieve democracy and human rights. Party chairman Aung Shwe said in a speech at the ceremony that it was wrong to call the holiday "Tatmadaw Day" - Armed Forces Day - when it was originally called Resistance Day in honor of struggle against the Japanese occupiers. March 27 was celebrated annually as Resistance Day until 1975 when the single-party quasi-military regime then in power changed the name to Tatmadaw Day. |