Burmese regime tightens security (T

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Subject: Burmese regime tightens security (The Times of India, 7/12/96.)

Burmese regime tightens security
The Times of India, 7/12/96.
 
RANGOON:        Police sealed off streets on Friday near a 
Rangoon campus as more than 100 students apparently tried to 
start a protest, four days after the biggest demonstration since 
the bloody 1988 uprising against military rule.
 
Security at the Rangoon Institute of Technology has been tight 
since the last protest was broken up Tuesday outside Rangoon's
holiest shrine, the gilded Shwedagon Pagoda.
 
Witnesses said the students tried to leave the campus in early 
afternoon, but riot police immediately sealed off the main road 
running past the campus with six fire trucks.
 
Witnesses beyond the barriers could not see what was 
happening inside, but said the joint action by the students 
suggested another protest was afoot.
 
Earlier, about 30 students living in an off-campus dormitory 
were refused entry to the institute, there the majority of 
students in two protests since October have been enrolled.
 
The rapid action by the security forces indicated that the 
military regime wanted no repeat of the demonstration by 1,000 
students who staged a sit-in on Monday, then marched through 
Rangoon all night.
 
The regime has been wary of any link between the 
demonstrations and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu 
Kyi's prodemocracy movement. Kyi Maung, a senior leader of 
her party, was detained for a week after the October protest. 
Government officials blamed this week's protest on "political 
elements."
 
The protest and a smaller one in October stemmed from a 
police beating of three students after a dispute with a food stall 
owner. But political overtones were increasingly evident in the 
protest earlier this week, with banners championing freedom 
and human rights.
 
Ms Suu Kyi had denied links to the protest but voiced support 
for the students on Thursday after breaking three days of house 
confinement imposed by the,government. (AP)