The Role of Students in the 8888 People’s Uprising in Burma

By Assistance Association for Political Prisoners - Burma • August 8, 2011

The decision of over hundreds of thousands of Burmese to take to the streets on 8 August 1988 did not happen overnight, but grew out of a growing sense of political discontent and frustration with the regime’s mismanagement of the country’s financial policies that led to deepening poverty.

In 1962 General Ne Win, Burma’s ruthless dictator for over twenty years, assumed power through a bloody coup. When students protested, Ne Win responded by abolishing student unions and dynamiting the student union building at Rangoon University, resulting in the death of over 100 university students. All unions were immediately outlawed, heavily restricting the basic civil rights of millions of people. This was the beginning of a consolidation of power by a military regime which would systematically wipe out all opposition groups, starting with student unions, using Ne Win’s spreading network of informers and military intelligence officers

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