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Burma arrests 20 students after pro



Subject: Burma arrests 20 students after protests-witnesses 

	Burma arrests 20 students after protests-witnesses
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    	By Vithoon Amorn
    	RANGOON, Dec 11 (Reuter) - Burmese security forces arrested
	about 20 students amid scattered protests in the capital
	Rangoon, witnesses and diplomats said on Wednesday.
    
	Some 50 Yangon University students staged a brief
	anti-government protest in front of the U.S. embassy in the
	centre 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
	Rangoon 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 on Wednesday 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 Rangoon 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.
    	Diplomats said the protests had also spread briefly over the
	weekend to two universities in the northern city of Mandalay.
    
	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 Burmese media on Wednesday 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 General Than
	Shwe said in speech to the government-run Union Solidarity and
	Development Association.
    	"All must keep vigil and prevent negatively oriented
	destructive and subservient traitors from intruding into
	educational realm and using students in bids to gain political
	power," he said.
    
	Powerful military intelligence chief Lieutenant General Khin
	Nyunt told Burmese writers at a ceremony on Wednesday to beware
	the threat to Burma posed by internal and external destructive
	elements. He did not identify the elements.
    	
	Diplomats said the SLORC had issued circulars to all
	embassies in Rangoon, 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.
    	The circular repeated SLORC accusations that some members of
	Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party, exiled
	Burmese students and the outlawed Communist Party of Burma were
	behind the protests.
    
	Suu Kyi has denied NLD members were involved in the unrest
	and protested restrictions on her movements.
 REUTER
0744 111296 GMT