Thursday, 24 August 2000
Concern for Education Activists
By Craig Skehan
Bangkok:- Embassies in Rangoon have been asked to help prevent official retaliation
against Burmese democracy activists who participated in a rare clandestine seminar at-
tended by foreign supporters.
An Australian delegate, Ms Lucy Abbot, of the Burma Support Group, said the overseas
representatives had travelled secretly to Rangoon for Monday's meeting.
But, she said, at one point up to 40 Burmese military intelligence personnel were out-
side the venue, and locals warned that informers had been planted inside.
"When we left they took photographs of participants and we were followed," she said.
About 200 people, including representatives of Burma's ethnic minorities, students and
the democracy leader Ms Aung San Suu Kyi, discussed the strict political controls on the
country's education system.
Participants said they were worried that Burmese involved would be persecuted through
imprisonment, loss of employment or harassment of family members.
They said security authorities at Rangoon international airport had seized a "dummy"
video tape of the meeting, while the real tape was shown yesterday at a news confer-
ence in Bangkok.
In it, Ms Aung San Suu Kyi was seen telling the seminar that the military regime used
education as a weapon.
"Education is not a right, it is conditional," the veteran democracy campaigner said, in a
reference to a requirement that students attending universities recently reopened -
some after more than a decade - sign a statement of loyalty to the government.
Speakers said the 14 foreigners at the seminar were not detained because the authori-
ties wanted to minimise adverse publicity.
Sydney Morning Herald
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