NEWS - Burma's students gear up for

[TheTruth@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: NEWS - Burma's students gear up for campus reopening

Myanmar students gear up for campus reopening

By Aung Hla Tun

  
YANGON, Dec 8 (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of Myanmar students are
anxiously preparing to return to their books for the first time since
the military closed campuses amid unrest three years ago. 

Some classes are set to resume from mid-December after the ruling State
Peace and Development Council (SPDC) indicated this week that the closed
institutions would soon be reopened. 

``I should have been a university third-year student by now,'' said Ma
Khaing who passed his university entrance in 1996. 

Maung Maung was a second-year student when classes were suspended at the
Yangon Institute of Technology (YIT), once a hotbed of unrest in the
capital. 

``We are just longing to pursue our studies at the regular classes
suspended three years ago,'' Maung Maung said. 

Some third-year and fourth-year YIT students said they had been told to
contact the institute to join classes expected to reopen in
mid-December. But they added that they had been told they could no
longer attend classes at the campus in Yangon. 

They will have to go instead to three satellite towns on Yangon's
outskirts where campuses have been relocated, diplomats say, to get
potentially restive student groups out of the capital. 

``I don't mind where it will be as long as I can pursue my studies
peacefully without further interruption,'' said a student. 

LOST YEARS 

In December 1996, students unleashed pent-up anger against the
authorities at some campuses and on the streets of Yangon. 

The military, unnerved by the spread of the unrest to other cities in
the worst protests since a bloody student-led pro-democracy uprising in
1988, promptly closed over 30 institutions a few days before final
examinations. 

Over 100,000 students were affected in a move which drew howls of
disapproval from the opposition National League for Democracy led by
Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. 

``The closing of the universities and colleges since 1996 is an
immeasurable national loss for the country,'' it said last week. 

``Never were schools closed for such a long time, even under the British
colonialists,'' it said, accusing the government of destroying the
careers of some potential leaders of the nation. 

The party deplored the fact that while civilian universities and
colleges had remained shut, military institutes of medicine and
technology were kept open. 

Over 400,000 students who passed entrance exams in 1996, 1997, 1998 and
1999 have been waiting to enter universities. 

NOTE OF CAUTION 

But a top official of the SPDC and Myanmar's powerful intelligence
chief, Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt, sounded a note of caution on the
sticky education issue. 

``I would like to urge the government, students and parents to keep
cooperating actively with concerted efforts for ensuring peaceful
pursuit of education,'' the official Myanmar language newspaper Kyemon
quoted him as saying. 

Former Japanese premier Ryutaro Hashimoto, who visited Yangon last week,
urged the military to reopen universities after Japan proposed expanding
aid to Myanmar if it moved towards democracy. 

A minister in the SPDC Chairman's Office, Brigadier-General David Abel,
said during Hashimoto's visit that 76 percent of university and college
classes had already been restarted. 

Arrangements were being made to restart those remaining in the next
academic year starting in April or May, he told Japanese reporters
accompanying Hashimoto. 

However, confusion surrounds the number of institutions that have been
reopened and the number of students who may have sat for examinations to
date, as information is hard to come by. 

Official statistics show there were 105 universities and colleges in
Myanmar as of November 1999. 

02:24 12-08-99