Students ‘Teach-in’ To Protest Junta

As the ruling junta continues its crackdown against pro-democracy protestors in Myanmar, students gathered for a teach-in at the Student Organization Center at Hilles to spread awareness about the situation there.

About 50 people attended the event Tuesday night, which followed last Friday’s demonstration in Harvard Square.

The first speaker, Daw Aye Aye San, was an activist in Myanmar, formerly Burma, in 1988 amid a wave of student protests. She said that after being arrested, she was tortured for six days before being sent to prison.

She said that one military officer told her, “You are like water in my hand...nobody can come and help you. Nobody can protect you and live peacefully in this country.”

Her speech was followed by presentations from Mark A. McDowell, a Canadian diplomat who had covered Burma while stationed in Bangkok for the last four years, and Tyler R. Giannini, the clinical director of the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School.

McDowell, who has made an estimated 25 visits to the country, said the western perception of Myanmar is not entirely correct.

“There’s a picture drawn of Burma in the west of being a very totalitarian police state,” he said, but “very close to the surface there’s a very wide, very deep opposition to the government.”

McDowell, who is on leave from his position to study at the Kennedy School, encouraged the students to add their voices to the protest against the regime.

“The government isn’t going to evaporate on their own,” he said.

But some at the meeting were skeptical that protests in the U.S. can be effective.

Fausto G. Gurrea, a student at the Kennedy School, said that protests here might not pressure the U.S. to take action against Myanmar’s ruling junta.

However, he added, “It’s no harm to be active and push for a change.”

The organizers of the teach-in said they were pleased by the number of attendees.

“I was amazed by the turnout, especially in Hilles at night,” said the leader of the Harvard Burma Action Movement, a student at the College who uses the pseudonym Shanti Maung to protect her relatives and friends still living in Myanmar. “We are trying to get media attention so that the people of Burma know that the world is still watching.”