Youth swell ranks of Suu Kyi’s party Friday, 03 February 2012 04:11

YANGON: Myanmar’s youth, no strangers to the country’s long struggle for democracy, are increasingly daring to emerge from the political shadows as the regime promises a new era of openness.

Their enthusiasm offers much-needed new blood for Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party, whose top ranks are filled with elderly men in their 80s and 90s known as the “uncles”.

With the opposition gearing up for April 1 by-elections expected to propel Suu Kyi and possibly dozens more party members into parliament for the first time, many young people are heeding the call to battle. “I want to fight for the truth,” 25-year-old NLD member Thuzar Lwin said at the party’s ramshackle Yangon headquarters, where she was helping to re-register recently freed dissidents on the membership list.

Young Burmese have often been at the vanguard of their country’s decades-old resistance to oppression and military rule, but in the past they often waged their campaign on the street or in the shadows. Now they feel more able to make their voices heard. “They always suspected us, the government. Not now. Now we are free again,” said 21-year-old student Zar Yar Phyo.

In 1988 students were at the forefront of the biggest ever uprising against the military regime, which cracked down brutally on protesters, resulting in up to 3,000 deaths.                  afp

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