Demo in Ithaca!

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Amity Weiss, a 10th grade student at Ithaca High School, hands her father,
John, a bottle of soap to make freedom bubbles' at the rally she helped
organize.  The event, organized to protest human rights violations in
Burma, ws arranged by a young group called Kidsreach and held Thursday
afternoon on the Commoms. (Photo)

Event coincided with similar ones across world. (Ithaca Journal, September
10th, 1999)
By Kevin Harlin 

Ithaca-  A small group of activists in ithaca demonstrated Thursday to show
solidarity with others around the world who called for democracy in Burma,
officially known as the Union of Myanmar.

Members of the youth group known as Kidreach organized a brief rally on the
Ithaca Commons Thursday calling for democracy in the Southeast Asian
country, where nine years after the last free elections, the military junta
has yet to recognize the results.

The rally known as 9/9/99 is times to coincide with others in major cities
in the U.S. and around the world.  Protest are also planned for Myanmar.

"Today, we might have a new democracy, which would be a very important
thing," said Amity Weiss, an Ithaca High School student and one of the
rally organizers.

But Ithaca's most active Burmese revolutionary-Htun Aung Gyaw, who
organized a conference in May that drew dozens of Burmese activists from
around the world to Ithaca- was in New York City, attending larger
demonstrations there.

Htun Aung Gyaw,(pronounced ton ung jaw) who studied and works at Cornell
University, was imprisoned for five years in burma during the 1970s for
fighting the government.  In 1989, he was sentenced to death in absentia
for treason for being a high-ranking member of an influencial armed student
group, the All Burma Students' Democratic Front, which took to the jungle
to fight the military.

He came to Ithaca in 1992 after three years as a political refugee in
Thailand.  He then continued the struggle from Ithaca via the Internet,
using strategies that he shared with others at the conference in May.

"This will be more important than you think," said Amity's Father , John
Weiss, a Cornell University professor, speaking to the 10-or so students
there.  "Htun will find out we did this for him".