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Nearly four weeks of protests in Myanmar are "just the start" of a mass movement against the ruling junta and the grinding poverty endured by the former Burma's 53 million people, a top activist said.
"There is no way this will stop," Htay Kywe said from a secret location inside Myanmar, where he has been in hiding since evading an August 21 crackdown on dissidents who launched a rare string of protests against shock increases of fuel prices.
"Arresting and killing people will not free us from economic hardship," the 39-year-old said in digitally recorded answers to questions emailed by Reuters and authenticated by a person known to be a close friend.
Thirteen of Htay Kywe's colleagues in the "88 Generation Students Group" that spearheaded a nationwide uprising against military rule in 1988 have been arrested and accused of terrorism, charges that could have them jailed for decades.
But Htay Kywe, who eluded midnight raids on homes across Yangon, said the generals who have run the south-east Asian nation for the past 45 years would never be able to cover up the deepening poverty.
"As long as the public are experiencing a lack of development, economic hardship, authoritarian rule and injustice, there will be, and will always be, a situation where the public will not accept it and will fight back," he said. More than 150 people have been detained in the current crackdown, one of the harshest since troops were sent in to crush the 1988 uprising with the loss of an estimated 3000 lives.
Although memories of the bloodshed are still fresh in people's minds, Htay Kywe said increasing economic hardship would fuel the underground social movement.
"As long as they are unable to solve the troubles the country is in today, movements like this will never end," he said. "Like the rising tide and waves, the military government will be hearing these voices loud and clear."
Even as the protests have spread, they have remained focused firmly on deteriorating living conditions in a country seen as one of Asia's brightest prospects when it won independence from Britain in 1948 and now one of the region's poorest.
Analysts said the fact he and other activists such as Ma Nilar and Suu Suu Nway had remained undetected for so long suggested the junta's internal spy networks may not be as powerful as they used to be.
In particular, they pointed to the 2004 purge of Prime Minister Khin Nyunt and the dismantling of his military intelligence-run network of informants and secret police.
Despite the latest crackdown, the fuel price protests have spread to the centre and north-west and have started to involve Buddhist monks, key players in the 1988 uprising.
- Reuters
