RANGOON – About 50 people led by a poet named Saung Kha gathered in Rangoon’s Maha Bandoola Park on Friday to condemn a recent crackdown on student protesters that resulted in multiple injuries and the detention of more than 100 people.
“We have seen videos and pictures on social media [of police brutality]. We are not happy about it, so we are expressing our feelings peacefully,” Saung Kha told The Irrawaddy on Friday.
Donning white armbands reading, “We are students, Respect our rights,” the group will resume their demonstration every other day indefinitely, depending on whether issues between the government and student demonstrators have been resolved, according to Saung Kha.
Participants will distribute the armbands to passersby and attach them to cars–upon the owner’s permission–in various parts of the city. The armbands are symbolic of those worn by plainclothes men that helped police to disrupt an earlier student protest in Rangoon.
Saung Kha said that the group is acting independently of any organization; if someone attends the demonstration they cannot be there as a representative of any other cause. The group did not seek permission for an assembly but has thus far seen no interference by police.
A core group of student activists attempting to march to Rangoon were violently dispersed by police in Letpadan, Pegu Division, on March 10. Many were injured as baton-wielding police lashed out indiscriminately at students, journalists and monks. The incident followed a similar but much smaller crackdown in Rangoon on March 5, when eight people were arrested including a leading women’s rights activist.
