Security forces arrest 20 students in Yangon

Security forces arrest 20 students in Yangon

YANGON (Reuter): Myanmar's security forces arrested about 20 students amid scattered protests in the capital Yangon, witnesses and diplomats said yesterday.

Some 50 Yangon University students staged a brief anti- government protest in front of the U.S. embassy in the center of the city late on Tuesday, they told Reuters.

"They gathered near the embassy after either walking or taking buses to the embassy. About 20 students were arrested," a student source said.

Government confirmation was not immediately available. More than 100 students at a medical school in central Yangon shouted anti-government slogans at the gate of their campus on Tuesday and later dispersed, witnesses said.

Police and military personnel manned checkpoints in the vicinity of the university and the Yangon Institute of Technology for the sixth day.

All university campuses have been closed since Monday and student sources said yesterday that parents were told by campus authorities to take home boarding students for two weeks.

Anti-government street protests staged by students last week were the biggest seen in Yangon since the pro-democracy uprisings of 1988, which the military crushed leaving thousands dead or in jail.

At the peak of the demonstrations, thousands of protesters took to the streets from the two colleges. The authorities broke up the protests, held over 860 students and later freed them.

The students were protesting against alleged police brutality during a brawl in October between some institute students and restaurant owners. They also want to be allowed to set up student unions on campus.

Official Myanmar media yesterday quoted top officials of the ruling military-led State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) as warning against further disturbances by unnamed politicians and students.

"If peace and tranquility are marred due to lack of restraint and thoughtlessness of some politicians, arrangements for the building of a modern nation will meet with delay, hindrance or disruption," SLORC chairman Senior Gen. Than Shwe said in speech to the government-run Union Solidarity and Development Association.

Powerful military intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt told Myanmar writers at a ceremony yesterday to beware the threat to Myanmar posed by internal and external destructive elements. He did not identify the elements.

Diplomats said the SLORC had issued circulars to all embassies in Yangon, informing them the SLORC had exercised maximum restraint despite sustained student protests.

The circular said the SLORC request for opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to temporarily confine herself to her lakeside residence was for the Nobel laureate's own safety.

Suu Kyi has denied NLD members were involved in the unrest and protested restrictions on her movements.