SCMP : Exiled activist recalls slau

[hlaing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

South China Morning Post
Saturday  August 8  1998

Exiled activist recalls slaughter 

WILLIAM BARNES 
Aung Naing Oo remembers the moment troops opened fire as if it was
yesterday.

"Someone was carrying a portrait of [independence hero] Aung San. He was
killed. But someone else snatched it and held it up. He was killed, too, of
course," said the foreign affairs spokesman for the All Burma Students
Democratic Front.

A post-graduate student at Rangoon University, Aung Naing Oo had been swept
up in the protests that rolled through Burma in 1988.

"I was really, really free for the first time in my life," he said. "I was
able to talk about anything without any fear. It was strange and
wonderful."

He started to journey into the countryside to tell everyone about
democracy.

"I remember very well, a farmer stood up who was so nervous the microphone
was shaking. He said, 'I don't know much about democracy but if it means
that I can get back the land and the fishing gear that the Government stole
from me then I support it.' "

But the violent backlash was unblinking. He escaped the massacres in
central Rangoon on August 8, 1988. The next day, he joined a 6,000-strong
anti-military protest in northern Rangoon.

The protesters kowtowed to a strong army force, including heavy
machineguns, that stopped them at a bridge.

"They said, 'You are the people's army. You can't kill us'." When the
troops opened fire Aung Naing Oo remembers a woman student leader in bright
white clothes who was suddenly dressed in red.

"A lot of people got killed because they could not believe the army would
behave like that," he said. "We were so angry that later we lifted railway
carriages onto the road - anger gave us an incredible strength."

A year later, his anger still boiling, he fled in a smuggler's boat to
Moulmein on the southern panhandle and - disguised as a cattle merchant -
to the Thai border, where he joined the student opposition.

"Now we are committed to non-violent change," he said. "I think the army is
very vulnerable. I am not sure if even their own troops would kill as
freely as they did 10 years ago.

"But I do think we are on a collision course. It really is time for
reconciliation. For someone in the army to emerge as a real hero for once."