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AFP-Classes to resume at Yangon tec



Classes to resume at Yangon technology school, university sources say
Wed 26 Aug 98 - 05:58 GMT 

YANGON, Aug 26 (AFP) - Myanmar's junta is preparing to reopen one of the
capital's closed universities this week, despite the biggest
anti-government demonstrations since schools were shut here two years ago.

The Yangon Institute of Technology, now renamed the Yangon University of
Technology, is preparing to resume its regular classes for the new academic
year, sources at the the university said.

They said classes were scheduled to start on August 28.

One of the hot-beds of student unrest in the past, the campus has begun
accepting enrollments of first, second and third-year engineering students,
the sources said.

"To date some 275 boarding students out of a possible 1,077 have already
settled in," an employee at the registrars office said, adding the
university has places for more than 2,500 undergraduates.

University exams began across Myanmar earlier this month for the first time
since campuses were closed after student unrest in December 1996.

No date has been officially set for the reopening of universities but the
junta has repeatedly said the actions of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi
and other opposition figures were hampering the education system.

Junta officials were unavailable for immediate comment Wednesday.

"It appears the military authorities are confident enough to go on with the
scheduled resumption of classes despite signs of sporadic student unrest,"
one local analyst said.

The Yangon University of Technology, some eight miles (12.8 kilometers)
north of the city center, was late Monday the scene of a protest by diploma
students angry at being locked out.

Details were sketchy, but foreign diplomats said up to 100 students staged
the demonstration at around 7:00 p.m. (1130 GMT) Monday.

The campus, together with others in the capital, was temporarily locked
following a student demonstration earlier in the day at an intersection
some four miles further into town near the main arts and science university
campus.

Witnesses said up to 150 protestors and some 1,000 onlookers, who had been
cheering as the activists chanted anti-junta slogans at Hledan intersection
outside Yangon University, scattered as the riot police advanced on the
demonstration.

Rocks were thrown and riot police were mobilised during the demonstration
later Monday, foreign diplomats said.

They were the first student demonstrations since a much bigger protest
prompted the military authorities to suspend undergraduate university
classes in December 1996.

Political tensions in Yangon have been on the rise in recent weeks with the
pro-democracy opposition saying they will convene a parliament along the
lines of 1990 election results, despite official warnings that such a move
would be illegal.

The opposition spearheaded by the National League for Democracy party led
by Nobel peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi won the polls eight years
ago but have been denied power by the military.