Myanmar Students Held U.N. Staff

[moe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Tuesday October 19 4:12 AM ET 
Myanmar Students Held U.N. Staff

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Myanmar dissident students held five U.N. staff
captive for several hours at a refugee camp near the Thai-Myanmar border
before agreeing to release them, officials said today.

Around 50 students locked one French and four Thai staff from the U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees in a meeting room at the Maneeloy holding center,
90 miles west of Bangkok, on Monday.

Janvier Deriedmatten, an agency representative, said the students agreed to
release the workers after holding them for over two hours, following
negotiations with local Thai authorities.

``Nothing dramatic happened. There was no physical violence, no threats, but
we will have to make sure that the next time there is a way out for our
staff,'' he said.

The incident comes less than three weeks after militant Myanmar students
stormed the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok and took some 38 hostages at gunpoint.

Komet Daenthongdee, governor of Ratchaburi province where the camp is
located, said the students involved in Monday's incident were angry because
they had missed out on their $20.50 monthly allowance.

They failed to collect their stipends because they were outside the camp
when the money was paid. Refugees at Maneeloy took part in peaceful
demonstrations in front of the Myanmar mission in central Bangkok for
so-called Nines Day, which fell on Sept. 9, or 9-9-99. On that day,
dissidents hoped but failed to stir up an uprising inside Myanmar against
the regime.

Three weeks later, five student radicals demanding democracy in Myanmar and
release of political prisoners stormed the embassy, holding it for 26 hours
before releasing all captives in return for safe passage to the Thai-Myanmar
border.

Some 1,000 asylum-seekers stay at Maneeloy. They are mainly former students
who helped lead the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar, also known as Burma,
and who fled a bloody clampdown by the Yangon military in 1988.