For Burma's dissidents, there may b

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Subject: For Burma's dissidents, there may be no  going back

For Burma's dissidents, there may be no
 going back
Friday, October 8, 1999 
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

  Activists say last week's armed struggle means more resistance
 against the regime. 

 By Justin Pritchard, Special to The Christian Science Monitor

 For nearly a decade, pro-democracy dissidents vying to topple the military
 regime in Burma have urged a nonviolent strategy. Now, frustrated by the
 lack of progress, some in the movement appear to be changing their tactics. 

 Activists speculate that the first armed resistance outside Burma - last
 weekend's hostage drama at the country's Bangkok embassy - will not be the
 last. 

 On Saturday, after 25 tense hours at the embassy, the renegade exiles
 exchanged the 38 unharmed hostages, including one American, for safe
 passage in helicopters to the Thai-Burmese jungle border. 

 They say their action was designed to transform international sympathy for the
 pro-democracy cause into international pressure on Burma, which is called
 Myanmar by the current government. 

 Since nullifying a democratic election in 1990, the Army-run State Peace and
 Development Council has ruled the pariah nation amid charges of gross human
 rights abuse. While some dissidents have previously taken up arms in the
 eastern reaches of the Southeast Asian nation, across the border in Thailand
 pro-democracy exiles languish in refugee camps. Those who did not flee
 following the military's consolidation of power in 1988, including Nobel
 laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, report suffering harassment and arrest. 

 In the wake of the embassy incident, Burmese dissidents are grappling with
 just what the raid by the heretofore-obscure Vigorous Burmese Student
 Warriors means for their movement. 

 "I cannot support this action, but I can understand and sympathize with their
 feeling," says Sai Win Pay at a conference attended in Bangkok this week by
 several dissident groups. A member of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League
 for Democracy Party (NLD), Sai Win Pay is one of the representatives
 elected in 1990. His opinion echoed an official NLD condemnation of the raid.

 Despite the denunciation by the respected NLD, more than half of the
 dissidents interviewed at the human rights training program - which ironically
 convened just before the raid - say armed struggle must be a complement to
 civil disobedience. 

 "San Suu Kyi asked every democratic fighter to make decisions on their own
 experiences and perceptions," says Khaing Kaung San, a representative of
 Burmese students from the Arakan ethnic minority. In his mind, that is an
 implicit endorsement of armed struggle. 

 The embassy raid came a few weeks after Burmese exile groups urged their
 compatriots to launch "a wave of force that would topple the regime,"
 beginning on the numerically auspicious date of Sept. 9, 1999. On Aug. 8,
 1988, millions of Burmese took to the streets and demanded an end to
 repressive military rule. 

 Though the dissidents differ on tactics, each predicts the embassy raid is not
 likely to be a one-act wonder. Indeed, the Vigorous Warriors themselves
 promised, "We will continue to fight until we get democracy," in an Aug. 29
 statement announcing the group's founding, Thai press reported. 

 Burma watchers suspect that is not just bluster. Somchai Homlaor, who
 helped negotiate the hostages' release, thinks that some splinter group - be it
 the Vigorous Warriors or another upstart faction - will act again. 

 "My assumption is, so far as we cannot solve the problem in Burma, this will
 happen again," he says. 

 Mr. Somchai, secretary- general of the Bangkok-based Asian Forum for
 Human Rights and Development, noted that students have demonstrated
 regularly outside Myanmar's walled embassy in Bangkok "but it didn't become
 big news." And news, he surmised, was the ultimate goal of the exercise. 

 "The event has both positive and negative impacts," according to Somchai. 

 "The negative impact is that the Thai authorities may deploy more strict
 measures to prevent the movement of Burmese students in Thailand. The
 positive impact is that the Thai people [now] understand that whenever Burma
 has a problem, Thailand cannot avoid the effect." 

 If the hostage-takers were looking for international sympathy, there is ready
 evidence that they succeeded. In comments that vexed Burma's military
 leaders, the Thai interior minister called the five gunmen "student activists
 struggling for democracy." 

 And in a bizarre twist at the end of the drama, a half- dozen of the Western
 hostages tearfully bid their captors goodbye, shouting "Free Burma" as the
 helicopters whisked the five men away.