Myanmar prevents student protesters from marching to Yangon

Truckloads of police on Monday prevented hundreds of student protesters from continuing their march to Myanmar’s biggest city to push for educational reform. Students have been marching from Myanmar’s second-largest city of Mandalay to Yangon, the old capital, since January, demanding changes to a recently passed education law that they say inhibits academic freedom. The demonstrators have spent the last 10 days in Letpadan, about 145 kilometers (90 miles) north of Yangon, and were planning to resume their rally Monday.

Action will be taken to maintain law and order, security and tranquility.

Yangon Government

The new education law, passed by parliament in September, puts all decisions about policy and curriculum in the hands of a body made up largely of government ministers. It bans students from forming unions and ignores calls for local languages to be used in instruction in ethnic states. Public support has been increasing for the students in their march of several hundred kilometers (miles) to demand the scrapping of the law, which they say fails to give autonomy to universities. The threat of an expanded protest is sensitive in Myanmar, in part because students were at the forefront of pro-democracy protests in 1988 that were brutally crushed by the military.

Myanmar Asia-Pacific