Youth activists demanded more rights for students on March 13 as they marked the 26th anniversary of the death of a Rangoon Institute of Technology undergraduate gunned down by Lone Htein riot police during one of the protests that ignited the 1988 uprising later that year.
The memory of Ko Phone Maw was honoured at a ceremony held the Tadaphyu (‘White Bridge’) on Pyay Road, later dubbed the Tadani, (‘Red Bridge’), because of the blood that flowed there when Lone Htein fired on protesting students on March 16, 1988, killing an unknown number.
The Lone Htein were reported to have killed some injured students by holding their heads under Inya Lake until they drowned.
The March 13 incident came a day after RIT students clashed with other customers in a tea shop, including the son of an official in the ruling Burma Socialist Program Party, who was arrested and later released. When RIT students gathered the next day to protest against the release Lone Htein opened fire, killing Ko Phone Maw and another student, Ko Soe Naing.
The anniversary ceremony was attended by more than 100 students and youth activists, who called for more rights, including the establishment of a Student Union, and a better education system.
Literary awards in honour of Ko Phone Maw and Ko Soe Naing were presented at the ceremony and plans were also announced for a mausoleum honouring them to be built next year on the campus of the Yangon Institute of Technology.
Protests after the deaths of Ko Phone Maw and other students escalated into a national uprising against the Socialist government that resulted in the resignation of the dictator Ne Win in July 1988.
The protests reached a peak the following month but were brutally crushed, with the loss of hundreds of lives, after the military seized power on September 18, 1988, declared martial law and installed the junta that ruled the country until the Thein Sein government took power in early 2011.
