Suu Kyi still confined to home, tro

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Subject: Suu Kyi still confined to home, troops guard junta's leader's home.


	Suu Kyi still confined to home, troops guard junta's leader's home
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            RANGOON, Burma (AP) -- Rather than ask the government for 
	    permission to
            leave, Burma's pro-democracy leader remained at her home 
	    surrounded by riot
            police Saturday and kept supporters waiting for her at a 
 	    Rangoon junction. 
	
            Aung San Suu Kyi has said she is being illegally confined. 
	    Officials from her
            political party say she refuses to give in to the 
	    government's demand that she
            ask permission to go out. 

            For the past several weekends, she had met her supporters at 
	    the Saya San
            junction, named after a Buddhist monk who led a failed 
	    uprising against British
            rule during the 1930s. Three hundred of them waited in vain 
	    for her Saturday. 

            Riot police have physically blocked the 1991 Nobel Peace 
	    Prize winner at her
            lakeside compound since last weekend, when university 
	    students took to the
            streets in the boldest display of civil dissent since Burma's 
	    1988 democracy
            uprising. 

            The students were demanding an end to police brutality, the 
	    right to form a
            students' union, and greater civil liberties. Some called for 
	    democracy in this
            land long ruled by military regimes. 

            Four armored personnel carriers loaded with soldiers are now 
	    guarding the
            home of Gen. Than Shwe, the leader of the ruling junta. 

            Five tanks also remained stationed by the Sule Pagoda in 
	    downtown Rangoon,
            a focal point for protests in 1988, and troops had sealed off 
	    a medical
            university where students had staged sit-ins this week. 

            Several trains from Mandalay to Rangoon were delayed this 
	    week because
            troops were searching for students intending to join protests 
	    in the capital. 

	    [FOX, 14 December 1996].

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