Chiang Mai – Burma's main opposition party says it successfully held a National Day celebration this past weekend, despite the occasion falling amid a relentless drive by the military junta in dishing out harsh prison terms to political activists and dissidents.
The National League for Democracy (NLD) held its 88th National Day celebration at its party headquarters on Saturday the 22nd, from noon to 3 p.m. Members of the Committee Representing People's Parliament' (CRPP), ethnic organizations and veteran politicians were among the over 400 in attendance.
NLD spokesman U Nyan Win said they held the celebration with the aim of focusing attention on national unity, unity among all ethnic nationalities, and not to forget the historical National Day.
Though four security personnel in plainclothes kept watch over the celebration and about 15 vehicles from security agencies were deployed around the venue, the celebration concluded peacefully and successfully.
The nonagenarian veteran politician Thakin Thein Pe (93) said in his speech, "In the current situation, for all ethnic peoples, I'd like to say national unity is crucial and we must build it at all costs. In building national unity in our country, we must follow the way, what Sayagyi Thakin Kodaw Hmaing said, through dialogue, in order to get a win-win situation. This is the one and only way to achieve this goal."
Like many times before, in his felicitation message sent on National Day which appeared in the government controlled New Light of Myanmar, Senior General Than Shwe said that some foreign powers were trying to intervene in Burma's domestic affairs by exercising neo-colonialism.
Moreover, he again urged the people to support his controversial roadmap. "The people must actively participate in this state building with patriotism," voiced the military leader.
However, 88 Generation Students could not attend the day's function, organized and attended by opposition members, as the top leaders of the student group have been suppressed by long prison terms of 65 years each.
The message by veteran politicians on the occasion was, "The junta's current activity of arresting political dissidents, giving them long prison terms and sending them to remote prisons away from their families and homes is inappropriate, and moreover we are concerned over the spreading and worsening of the conflict".
National Day commemorates the first student boycott against colonial rule in 1920. On that day, students at Rangoon University protested the University Act enacted by the colonial government, which it was believed deprived the right to higher education to most Burmese people.
As one part of its roadmap, the junta held a constitutional referendum in May of this year without giving people the chance to criticize and discuss the draft. The vote, throughout most of the country, was held just one week after Cyclone Nargis hit Burma, leaving 130,000 dead or missing. The draft constitution purportedly received 93 percent support from the general public.
The junta has since turned down the opposition's calls to engage in dialogue, including with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, by saying that since the constitution was prepared and drafted by over 1,000 delegates and had been approved overwhelmingly in the recent referendum – they are thus obliged to proceed to the next step in the roadmap, a general election to be held in 2010.
The NLD, led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, won a landslide victory in the 1990 general election, but the junta has consistently refused to hand over power to them.
During this month, the junta has meted out prison terms of up to 68 years to over 100 dissidents who protested against the junta's roadmap and called for dialogue.
The junta recently sentenced the leader of the monk-led protests, Ashin Gambira, to 68 years in prison and gave a 45 year term to comedian Ko Zargana. Ashin Gambira and his fellow monks had urged the junta to engage in dialogue with all stakeholders for a political solution to the country's crisis by chanting the Metta Sutra – the Buddha's teaching on loving-kindness.
