By Joshua Carroll
YANGON, Myanmar
Student activists in Myanmar have gone into hiding as authorities launch a harsh campaign of harassment against protesters and their families following a violent crackdown last week.
Dozens of people from the All Burma Federation of Students Unions are evading police, local media reported Friday. Meanwhile, 100 of their comrades languish in jail, barred from making contact with their families or even a lawyer.
“Since our children were arrested, we have waited at the entrance everyday to send things to them,” Khin Khin Yu, the mother of one of the jailed protestors, told the Irrawaddy news website.
The police's actions against students in recent weeks have been scarcely different from the draconian tactics of the previous junta, which officially stepped down in 2011 when a quasi-civilian government came to power.
Riot officers and what many have described as ”plainclothes thugs” viciously beat and arrested members of a column of protestors in the town if Letpadan on Mar. 10, ending a standoff between protestors and authorities.
Police initially arrested 127 people in the Letpadan crackdown, but have since freed 29, including two journalists. Despite those releases, the government has continued to pursue others they regard as key organisers in the students’ recent demonstrations for education reform.
Authorities have been using a law that bans unregistered overnight guests to carry out midnight inspections on the homes of people they suspect of harbouring activists.
“As long as this law remains on the books, authorities are free to use household inspections to target dissenters and oppress the least advantaged,” said Matthew Smith of Bangkok-based Fortify Rights, which on Thursday released a report calling for the law to abolished.
Even those expressing support for the students have been harassed. Officers from Myanmar’s notorious Special Branch have filmed and interrogated people in Yangon, the commercial capital, handing out white armbands in solidarity with campaigners.
The white armband campaign began in response to an earlier crackdown on demonstrators in Yangon, around 140km south of Letpadan. On that occasion several were injured by baton wielding police and eight people were briefly detained.
The bands read, “we are students, respect our rights” and feature images of raised fists, a symbol of resistance that students have used widely in their recent rallies.
