Students celebrate 1988 Burma protests with spray-paint campaign

Student activists at universities in Rangoon and Mandalay are literally painting the town red in a campaign to draw public attention to the 20th anniversary this Friday of the bloody crackdown on the country's biggest post-independence uprising, in August 1988 writes Edward Loxton for The First Post.

Under cover of darkness, students are spraying government buildings, schools and other public places with red paint - "to symbolize the blood that flowed when troops opened fire on demonstrators in 1988", said one Rangoon university undergraduate.

Official figures at the time said around 350 died, but the real toll is universally recognised to be closer to 3,000. Around 2,000 demonstrators were rounded up and jailed, and one, the 78-year-old journalist Win Tin, is still behind bars, Burma's longest-serving political prisoner.

Win Tin was visited in Rangoon's notorious Insein Prison this week by the UN's new human rights rapporteur on Burma, Argentina's Tomas Ojea Quintana. The envoy was also allowed by the authorities to meet three labour rights activists and a prominent young monk, Gambira, who was one of the leaders of last September's mass demonstrations in Rangoon and other cities.

Ojea Quintana has not yet reported publicly on his visit to Insein Prison. The Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners urged him to press the regime to allow him to visit jailed members of the 88 Generation Students group, many of whom are reported to be in failing health.

The 88 Generation Students was formed by young people who led the 1988 uprising. By jailing its leaders, the regime hopes to sever any connection between the 1988 events and Burma's present-day student population. The spray-painting campaign, accompanied by the distribution of anti-government leaflets and posters, shows it has a long way to go before achieving that aim, however,

Security on Burmese university campuses has been reportedly tightened in advance of the August 8 anniversary, but students are playing a successful cat-and-mouse game with the frustrated authorities, who have yet to capture one spray-painter or bill-poster.

FIRST POSTED AUGUST 6, 2008