About 15 AU students attended a demonstration last week to protest the Myanmar government's crackdown on protests in their country.
The demonstration was held across the street from the Myanmar embassy on S Street last Thursday. About 40 to 50 people, including some children and several Myanmar refugees, attended the protest.
The protesters were attempting to call attention to recent actions of the Myanmar government in which the ruling military junta stopped protests over rising oil and gas prices.
"The Burmese people already don't have enough to eat," said Jojo Vicencio, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences who attended the protest. "By raising the prices [of oil and gas], it makes their lives a lot harder."
The ruling junta has called the country Myanmar since 1989. The U.S. government has not adopted this name and still calls the nation Burma, according to the CIA World Factbook.
The protest featured several speeches, including one by a woman who fled to the United States from Myanmar a year ago, according to Mike Haack, a graduate student in the School of International Service. Another speaker read a prepared statement from the exiled, democratically elected government.
It was important for the AU students to attend the protest because efforts in the United States to fight the Myanmar government are often broadcast into that country via Radio Free Asia, which provides support and encouragement to the Myanmar people fighting the government there, Haack said.
The protest allows members of the policy community in D.C. to come together and express their passion for an issue, he said.
Following the speeches, those in attendance passed around a megaphone and introduced themselves and indicated if they were affiliated with any non-profit or policy organizations.
Because many Myanmar refugees immigrate to the United States, this issue plays into the national debate on immigration as well, Vicencio said.
A few Myanmar diplomats saw the protest while leaving the embassy, Haack said.
"The protest reminded them that they can't just come to the U.S. and live the good life without recognizing the system [in Myanmar] that they're complicit in," he said.
The protest last week was not the beginning of AU involvement in advocacy for Myanmar. AU students have been on the forefront of American activism for the situation. There have been about eight alternative break trips to Myanmar or its border with Thailand since 1996, according to Haack, who attended a trip in 2003. Students meet with exiled democratic leaders, political prisoners and members of ethnic minority groups while on the trip.
During the most recent trip in 2006, students were not permitted into Myanmar, according to Vicencio, who went on the trip. Instead, they stayed in neighboring Thailand and learned from activists on the Thai-Myanmar border.
"It was really depressing, especially when we visited the hospitals and saw the people who had been injured by land mines," she said. "That really touched me."
A 12-general military junta has ruled Myanmar, which is located in Asia between India and China, since 1962, according to the BBC.
In 1988, thousands of people were killed in anti-government riots. In response, the government formed the State Law and Order Restoration Council, or Slorc. The council declared martial law and arrested hundreds of Myanmar people.
In 1990, the National League for Democracy, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, won a landside victory in the first multi-party national elections in 30 years. The ruling junta prohibited them from taking over the government and placed several rulers of the party under house arrest for several years.
Some of the leaders, including Kyi, were released since their arrest. Kyi has since been re-arrested and remains under house arrest.
