Protest and Run: Junta faces a new

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                   Protest and Run
              Junta faces a new strain of political defiance

                    By Bertil Lintner in Bangkok

                       September 17, 1998



    T he latest crackdown on Burma's main opposition party, the National
    League for Democracy, was hardly unexpected. Days before the arrests of
    110 members of the NLD started, the military government said it would take
    firm action against the league if it continued to promote its plan to
convene
    "a people's parliament." The NLD stuck to its plans--and, on September 6,
    the junta began to sweep through its ranks, arresting officials and MPs. 

    The government may have dealt a crippling blow to what's left of the
    pro-democracy party, but now there is a new challenge to its power. And
    this form of opposition could be far more difficult to suppress: Small,
    elusive and clandestine cells of students who are trained in the art of
civil
    disobedience and political defiance.

    The hit-and-run tactics they used recently are typical. At midday on
    August 24 a group of about 100 students staged a sit-down protest at an
    intersection not far from Rangoon's main university campus. The same
    night another group gathered outside the Rangoon Institute of
    Technology, located in a northern suburb.

    The following day, during the afternoon rush-hour, a much smaller group
    of students shouted pro-democracy and anti-government slogans outside
    the City Hall in downtown Rangoon. Others appeared at different times and
    places, distributed leaflets and then quickly melted away. Then, on
    September 2, over a thousand students gathered inside the RIT to protest
    that they had been allowed just a week's basic instruction to prepare for
    their exams. (All Burmese universities have been closed since December
    1996.)

    This is all a far cry from the mass protests of 1988, which involved
millions
    of people--students and others--demonstrating against the regime all over
    the country. Those demonstrations led to a massive military crackdown in
    which soldiers sprayed automatic-rifle fire into crowds of protesters,
killing
    thousands. Other demonstrators were carried away in army trucks as the
    government reasserted power. Still others fled to the Thai border where,
    embittered by their experiences, they linked up with ethnic insurgents to
    wage a guerrilla war against Rangoon. 

    Their dream of an armed uprising began to fade, however, as student
    fighters died in battle and from disease. But then the new type of
    nonaggressive struggle emerged, partly through the advice of foreign
    sympathizers. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, civil liberties'
activists from
    the United States, Japan, Australia, Thailand and the Philippines were
    among those who flocked to the Burmese border to help train hundreds of
    students in the art of nonviolent protest.

    "It does seem that recent demonstrations reflect a greater
understanding of
    certain principles of nonviolent struggle," says a Westerner familiar with
    the courses and seminars conducted along the border. "Moreover, tens of
    thousands of booklets on this subject have been distributed throughout
    Burma."

    Foreign diplomats in Rangoon say signs of this new movement appeared
    as early as December 1996, the last time student unrest erupted in
    Rangoon. The timing of those protests wasn't a coincidence. The
    government started to hold monthly press conferences in September 1996,
    making it easier for foreign journalists to enter the country--and that
meant
    that when the students protested, foreign TV crews were present. It was
    those demonstrations that led to the closure of all universities and a
ban on
    all but a few carefully selected foreign journalists.

    Students from several campuses took part in the December 1996
    demonstrations, indicating a high degree of clandestine organization in a
    country tightly controlled by a ubiquitous secret police, the
Directorate of
    the Defence Services Intelligence, or DDSI. The current political and
    economic crisis triggered a new wave of protests in August and September
    this year.

    "There are many underground groups," says a Burmese student close to
    the movement. "They operate independently but have an understanding
    among each other. When one group launches a protest and then disperses
    quickly, some others, on hearing about it, will back it up with a
    demonstration or by distributing leaflets elsewhere." Secrecy and speed
    seem to be the reasons why the DDSI so far has been unable to infiltrate
    the groups or arrest any significant number of activists.

    Sources in Rangoon say that even if the students support the NLD, the
    party knows little about the underground organizations that have been
    formed over the past few years. "Any closer contact with the students
    could be suicidal for the NLD, which still is a legal political party.
And the
    students know that there are DDSI agents and plants at every NLD office,
    so they keep a distance too," says an Asian diplomat in Rangoon.

    The authorities' inability to quell Burma's new, more sophisticated
student
    movement shows it strength, local sources in Rangoon say. But others also
    emphasize that the students may lose their momentum, unless they get
    support soon from other segments of society.