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Myanmar authorities arrest 110 NLD



Myanmar authorities arrest 110 NLD members, opposition officials say

       Mon 07 Sep 98 - 11:13 GMT

YANGON, Sept 7 (AFP) - Myanmar's military authorities have arrested 110
members of Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition National League for Democracyparty,
opposition officials said Monday.

The party said in a statement that some 50 of those arrested in various
parts of the country since Sunday were members of parliament elected in 1990
polls which the opposition won by a landslide.

The military refused to hand over power and has repeatedly rejected demands
by the NLD-led opposition that the 1990 parliament be convened.

Junta officials were not immediately available for comment. But observers in
Yangon said the arrests appeared to be a pre-emptive strike following the
NLD's announcement that it intends to convene parliament unilaterally by the
end of this month.

Political tensions have been rising since the NLD set an August 21 deadline
for the junta to convene parliament. After the deadline passed the
opposition vowed to convene parliament alone.

Meanwhile students have been holding a sit-in protest at a university campus
in Yangon.

Students at the Hlaing campus -- numbering between several hundred and
several thousand according to different estimates -- shouted anti-government
slogans during a peaceful protest Thursday night, witnesses said earlier.

Authorities responded by formally closing the campus, which largely serves
as a preparatory school for other  tertiary institutions.

Most of the protestors were from outside Yangon and were staying in
dormitories on the campus. Police locked the gates to the campus with some
1,000 students remaining inside.

Some 3,000 students protested at Hlaing on Wednesday last week while about
800 more gathered at the nearby Yangon Institute of Technology. Both
protests ended peacefully.

The demonstrations were the biggest since unrest in 1996 when universities
were closed.


)AFP 1998