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NEWS- Myanmar junta warns youth to



Subject: NEWS- Myanmar junta warns youth to beware of 'destructive traitors'

Myanmar-politics
   Myanmar junta warns youth to beware of 'destructive traitors'
   
   YANGON, Aug 28 (AFP) - Myanmar's military rulers have warned the
country's 
youth to beware of "destructive traitors" campaigning for a mass
uprising next 
month, state-run media reported Saturday.
   Powerful first secretary Khin Nyunt said "all the people need to see
to it 
that student youths are not lead astray by destructive traitors,"
according to 
the English language New Light of Myanmar.
   The All Burma Students' Democratic Front (ABSDF) said Friday that 29
high 
school students, some as young as 14, had been charged after a series of 
anti-junta demonstrations in the southern town of Mergui this month.
   The ABSDF said the students were facing up to seven year in jail,
possibly 
with hard labour.
   The junta has rejected reports of student uprisings as "complete 
fabrications" and said the Myanmar people were ignoring calls for a mass 
uprising on September 9.
   However Khin Nyunt told a gathering of primary teachers "the youth 
themselves need to know right from wrong, to safeguard the nation and
the 
people and to oppose traitors."
   He said students, who have for decades been at the forefront of the 
democracy movement, were "gullible" and called on all teachers to
instill 
"patriotism and union spirit" into their young charges.
   "Effective action will be taken against destructive elements wishing
to 
destroy the nation and to cause panic among the people," he said. 
   Exiled student groups and dissidents have called for a mass uprising
on 
September 9 -- or 9/9/99. The symbolic date has led it to be known as
the 
"Four Nines Movement."
   August 8 this year marked the 11th anniversary of an earlier
uprising, 
known as 8/8/88, in which hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators were
gunned 
down and a junta took power from strongman General Ne Win.
   That anniversary passed peacefully, but exile groups have said
Myanmar's 
people have an "appointment" with September 9 to repeat the events of
1988 and 
end the military's 37-year rule.
   Nobel peace laureate and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has
warned that 
the military is using the "Four Nines Movement" as a pretext to tighten
its 
grip.
   "I think they are using it as an excuse for cracking down," she said
in an 
interview with AFP earlier this week.
   Aung San Suu Kyi led the National League for Democracy to an
overwhelming 
victory in 1990 elections, but the military ignored the results.
   gw/agr/rob