BBC: Burma: Aung San Suu Kyi detained, crackdown escalates:

A number of the party‘s key members have been arrested since the NLD‘s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, was detained on Friday. Britain, France and Sweden have demanded the immediate release of Aung San Suu Kyi, who is being held at a military guesthouse in the capital, Rangoon. She was detained following clashes around her motorcade in the north of Burma, involving supporters of the government. Reports say the number of people killed may be much higher than the four dead announced by the government.The BBC‘s Larry Jagan says university campuses have been at the centre of political activity, and the authorities are worried that students may organise protests against Aung San Suu Kyi‘s renewed detention.

Most of the NLD‘s offices around the country have been closed by the authorities, while opposition sources say the military authorities have also begun to take into custody many of the party‘s key provincial leaders. The clampdown follows clashes between NLD supporters and pro-government protesters in the north of the country on Saturday.Aung San Suu Kyi was visiting the region at the time and was detained there. There are fears that the extended crackdown on the opposition may mean that the generals who run Burma are planning to put Aung San Suu Kyi back under house arrest.

She was released from a long spell under house arrest last year - a move welcomed at the time as a sign that the junta was ready for political reform. But she recently attacked the military for the slow pace of change and their apparent reluctance to start political talks, and tensions have been rising between the opposition and the government. Last week, 10 members of the pro-democracy movement were sentenced to stiff jail terms for organising public protests and being involved in clandestine activities. Our correspondent says Burmese officials have been warning Aung San Suu Kyi‘s supporters not to incite unrest during their travels outside Rangoon.

He says she is being blamed for clashes which occurred while she was on a political tour of the north of the country. The military said four people were killed and 50 injured in the town of Yaway Oo, about 560 kilometres (400 miles) from Rangoon. The NLD won elections in 1990 by a landslide, but the military regime which has run the country since 1962 refused to hand over power.

Aung San Suu Kyi has spent much of the last decade under house arrest, but her popularity among the Burmese has not waned.After a seven-month interlude, the military junta hinted last month that it wanted to meet her again, raising expectations that the dialogue process between the two sides could be resumed. But her detention, recent violence and last week‘s convictions of pro-democracy campaigners are thought to have seriously undermined those hopes.

Ireland online:Burma closes universities after arresting Aung San Suu Kyi 02/06/2003 - 09:49:45 Burmese authorities turned away students from universities today, suspending classes just days after they arrested pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and closed her party’s offices. The crackdown on Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy follows a violent clash on Friday between her supporters and thousands of pro-government protesters, which officials said left four people dead and 50 injured. University sources said authorities suspended classes at all universities and colleges run by the Ministry of Education. No reason was given for the closures, they said. Burma’s university campuses have been hotbeds of pro-democracy activism in the past. After intermittent closures since 1988, they were shut down after 1996 student demonstrations and remained closed until mid-2000.

Students at the gates of the University of Foreign Language in the capital Rangoon said no prior notice was given about the suspension of classes. “I am surprised and disappointed with the closure. I am about the get my degree in another four months,” said one student who asked not to be named. It was not immediately known whether the closures were related to the ongoing crackdown on Suu Kyi and the NLD. The junta said on Saturday that it had placed the Nobel Prize winner and 19 members of her party into “protective custody” after Friday’s clash between her supporters and pro-government protesters. The scheduled reopening of the country’s primary and high schools, which was earlier delayed by authorities because of “intense summer heat this year” and to ease parents’ concerns about SARS, has been further postponed by two weeks. The schools are scheduled to reopen on July 1 instead of June 16, a school teacher said. Despite the Suu Kyi detention, a UN special envoy who brokered talks between her and the military junta will proceed with a planned visit to the country, an aide said today. Razali Ismail, a veteran Malaysian diplomat, believed it was “not prudent” for him to comment publicly for now on the detention of Suu Kyi – the widow of an Oxford don – and the closure of her National League for Democracy’s offices last weekend, the aide said.