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(02/22/94)How The Burma's Students



Subject: (02/22/94)How The Burma's Students Dream of Freedom

                         Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.  
                                The Toronto Star

                   February  22, 1994, Tuesday, FINAL EDITION


HEADLINE: How the dream of freedom is dying for Myanmar's student
revolutionaries

BYLINE: BY PETER GOODSPEED TORONTO STAR

DATELINE: BANGKOK

 
   Minn Aung Myint is a university student who has spent more time in jungle
guerrilla camps than in a classroom.

   Five years ago, he was studying Shakespeare's sonnets at the University of
Rangoon. 
   Today, he is a political exile struggling to fuel a revolution with little
more than good intentions.

   Along with 20,000 Burmese students who fled the bloody destruction of the
fledgling pro-democracy movement in 1988, Aung Myint escaped to the steamy,
cloud-covered jungles of the Golden Triangle.

   There he and his comrades teamed up with tribal guerrilla groups who had been
waging a sporadic 40-year-old war for independence from Burma.

   Young, inexperienced and overwhelmingly urban, they had little or no military
training, virtually no money and no weapons.

   Yet they dreamed of trying to turn themselves into an army of freedom
fighters.

   Instead, they have learned harsh lessons about the privations of jungle life,
the world's overwhelming indifference toward the former Burma, now called
Myanmar, and the pragmatism of regional power politics.

   Malaria and blackwater fever took their toll. Hunger was common in the jungle
and despair and resignation set in. 
   Most of the students who originally fled Burma in 1988 have quietly returned 
to their homeland.

   Hundreds of others have crossed over into Thailand to work illegally in low
paying jobs.

   Today, only about 1,800 Burmese exiles remain permanently active in the All
Burma Student Democratic Front, says Aung Myint, the group's main spokesperson
in Thailand.

   Only about 700 of those continue to operate in lightly armed bands inside
Myanmar.

   The remainder live in internationally monitored refugee centres just inside
Thailand or are studying overseas.

   "We're limited in what we can do now," Aung Myint admits sadly. "We still do 
some military training and run refresher courses for members who are in the
front lines. But mainly we are sending people back into Burma to educate the
people, to remind them how their lives are abused by the regime and to prepare
them for democracy." 
   Unspoken is the fact the student guerrillas are slowly being squeezed out of 
Myanmar's political picture.

   In the last year, the military junta in Yangon, the renamed capital of
Rangoon, has negotiated a series of ceasefire agreements with Myanmar's
rebellious ethnic minorities all along the Chinese and Thai border.

   Two years ago, after buying more than $ 1 billion worth of new weaponry,
Myanmar's armed forces launched its biggest offensive against ethnic insurgents 
in 41 years, with attacks all along its northern and northeastern borders.

   The government's troops quickly overran many guerrilla foreward bases and
pushed ethnic rebels back toward their headquarters.

   In some cases, Burmese insurgents accused local military commanders in
Thailand of assisting the Myanmar military in exchange for lucrative logging
contracts.

   Suddenly last year, as the Myanmar government desperately searched for
international acceptance, the guns fell silent and guerrilla group after
guerrilla group agreed to negotiate individual ceasefires with the junta in
Yangon. The Toronto Star, February 22, 1994                       
                                                                                
   Most of the ceasefire agreements allow the tribal groups to keep their
weapons, to organize their own militias and to keep the territory they now
control.

   At the same time, they promise ethnic rebels development aid and a chance to 
exploit Myanmar's growing trade links with China and Thailand.

   Last month, the Karen National Union, Myanmar's largest and most powerful
group of ethnic insurgents, announced it would open ceasefire talks with the
government in Yangon.

   Nine other ethnic groups, including the powerful Wa and Kachin independence
movements, have also accepted ceasefires with Yangon.

   For Burma's student revolutionaries, the result has been a disastrous loss of
their last military strongholds.

   Two years ago, during Myanmar's annual dry-season offensive, the student
rebels lost their main military bases along the Thai-Burmese border at Thay Baw 
Bo and Three Pagoda Pass, as Myanmar's army overran the students' bamboo and
thatch barracks and smashed their "jungle university." 
   Demoralized, frustrated and considerably weakened, the students have been
forced to become even more dependent on Myanmar's ethnic insurgents.

   In areas where ceasefires have been negotiated with the junta, ethnic groups 
now allow the Burmese students to continue their political propaganda work but
they've banned them from acting militarily.

   The sudden disintegration of a united opposition front has left the students 
more exposed and vulnerable than ever before.

   "The minority groups may have accepted ceasefires, but they don't really have
peace," Aung Myint says bitterly.

   "They are acting for the survival of their organizations, not in the
interests of the people," he says. "The people want peace, but all they are
getting is a ceasefire in which everyone remains armed."

   Late last year, the student movement suffered still another stinging blow
when some of its leaders and  Sein Win,  the premier of the "Burmese government 
in exile" were refused permission to re-enter Thailand after travelling to New
York to lobby the United Nations General Assembly. 
   Just as the pro-democracy opposition front is starting to unravel, the top
leaders of the Burmese exile movement find themselves stranded in the United
States and unable to return to their jungle base camps.

   Right now, the group's only hope really lies with national opposition leader 
Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been imprisoned in her family's Yangon home for nearly
five years.

   "She is still the head of the Second Independence Movement of Burma," Aung
Myint says. "She's recognized inside the country and internationally as the true
national leader. People admire her as a symbol of our nation and they still
believe that if she is released, she can do something for the country."

   For now, Myanmar's democratic cause seems stymied.

   "People are still finding ways to protest," Aung Myint argues. "I can't say
exactly what is going to happen, or how many years we are going to have to
fight. But I think it will be a long time."

GRAPHIC: photo LITTLE LEFT: A Myanmari rebel band marches in 1987. Now, says
Minn Aung Star photo (PETER GOODSPEED) inset, the uprising is fractured and
there is little hope of getting rid of the military junta.