The arrest of one of Aung San Suu Kyi’s deputies could escalate the popular movement against the military regime.

Kyi Maung’s detention and protests by up to 1,000 students in Rangoon bear a strong resemblance to the developments in 1988 which led to mass protests calling for democracy.
A relatively minor conflict between students and police then unleashed a military bloodbath which left thousands of protesters dead.

Yesterday’s short-lived night-time protest, supposedly against police brutality, by about 1,000 students is significant in a country as deeply repressed as Burma.

A trivial brawl between students and residents at a Rangoon tea shop in 1988 became the trigger for nation-wide protests when police beat one of the students to death. There followed a series of protests culminating in a bloody response that soon reached all the major cities and, in time, prompted the regime to hold a general election.

This election was lost by an avalanche to the hugely popular Ms Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD). But the result was not recognised by the new-look junta, which styled itself the State Law and Order Restoration Council.

When the 1988 protests ignited in a population that had reached the limits of tolerance for rising prices and brutal, incompetent administration, they prompted the regime to partially free up the economy and invite in foreign investors, essentially in the hope that richer people would be less likely to press for political reforms.

But the mini-booms that are transforming Rangoon and Mandalay have brought benefits largely confined to the regime or its friends. Ms Aung San Suu Kyi has reported that ordinary Burmese are actually finding it harder to survive now than they did eight years ago.

What happens now depends on the reaction of the authorities. If the junta chases down students in typically brutal fashion more ,members of a frustrated population may fly off the handle despite the fierce punishments that are almost invariably meted oilt.;

Ms Aung San Su’u Kyi herself is not likely to take the arrest of her deputy quietly.

But by picking off Kyi Maung, the vice-chairman of the NLD, the junta cuts as close to her as they can without actually arresting,her.

Kyi Maung took over the temporary leadership of the NLD in 1990 after Ms Auiig San Suu Kyi and her senior colleagues were arrested.

The former army officer carried the NLD through an overwhelming election victory in May 1990 only to be arrested himself - with the remaining leadership - four months later.

He became a vice-chairman, along with another former soldier, Tin Oo, after Ms Aung San Suu Kyi’s release from six years of house arrest last year.

Colonel Kyaw Thein, a senior intelligence officer, said before the September crackdown that “what happened in 1988 [when mass protests against military rule led to bloody repression and international isolation] started with a single demonstration ... to nearly the utter devastation of our country.

“We have learned the lesson.”

If the regime is typically heavy-handed after this demonstration it will show that they have learned a lesson but probably the wrong one.

[Analysis by William Barnes in Bangkok, South China Morning Post, Thursday, 24 October, 1996]


French oil company Total came under fire again yesterday for alleged human rights violations linked to a gas pipeline project in Burma.

“Not only does the project constitute moral and economic support for the ruling junta, but the work site is the occasion for massive and systematic human rights violations, including population movements, forced labour and summary executions,” the Paris-based International Human Rights Federation said.

[South China Morning Post, Thursday, 24 October, 1996]