THE HISTORY OF 88 UPRISING
Beginning of the “8888” uprising
Since 1962, Burma has lived under the rule of the repressive and isolated regime of General Ne Win. Despite being known as the 8888 uprising, the leadup to the nationwide uprising was turbulent. The country’s economy has worsened due to economic mismanagement, misdirected nationalization, and corruption. Ne Win’s “Burmese Way to Socialism” proved to be devastating for the economy. The economy was pushed to the tipping point as General Ne Win announced two sudden instances of demonetization- one on 3 November 1985 and the other on 5 September 1987. Those two demonetizations wrecked the lives of the citizens and aggravated the public.
The 1987 demonetization particularly aggravated the students as they had found their savings worthless and thus unable to pay school fees. Students at the Rangoon Institute of Technology (RIT), now known as the Yangon Technological University (YTU), protested and large protests in Rangoon (Yangon) followed suit. While these protests did not transform into nationwide uprisings, they were precursors to the “8888” uprising. On 12th March 1988, RIT students got into a brawl with the local youth inside the Sanda-Win tea shop. A son of an official from the Burmese Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) was arrested for injuring a person but was later released. This angered the students and they protested outside of a local police station. 500 riot police were dispatched to disperse the student protesters and Ko Phone Maw, a student activist, was killed in the protest. Phone Maw’s death triggered pro-democracy groups and protests spread to other campuses like wildfire. These incidents gradually coalesced into the 1988 uprising.
Moreover, in March 1988, the death of 42 student protestors from asphyxiation and heat after riot police bundled them into a van sparked a series of fierce demonstrations. The authorities closed all universities in Rangoon and ordered the students to return home, but this only emboldened the students. Small demonstrations against the government began to spread throughout towns and cities in government-controlled areas.
The student leaders promoted a set of ten demands for the restoration of a democratic government in Burma. Ne Win went on live television and said, “Guns were not to shoot upwards”, meaning that he was ordering the military to shoot directly at the demonstrators.
As the protesters showed no sign of giving up, General Ne Win resigned on 23 July 1988 and the military imposed martial law giving absolute power to the commander-in-chief, General Saw Maung, to quash the demonstrations. The military killed thousands of civilians, including students and Buddhist monks.
March 16, 1988
The ‘White Bridge’ incident (also symbolically known as ‘Red Bridge’ due to the blood of the students staining the White Bridge) took place on 16th March 1988. It was a pivotal incident that led to the “8888” uprising. According to a report from the Democratic Voice of Burma, nearly 100 students were shot by riot police or drowned in Inya Lake, adjacent to the White Bridge, when soldiers trapped them between barbed wire barricades, the lake, and the walls of nearby houses. It was an incident that reflected the merciless actions of the Burmese military.
“When we had passed a culvert, which we call ‘the White Bridge’, on Prome Road, near the bank of Inya Lake, we suddenly halted. A barbed-wire fence had been strung across the road in front of us. Beyond it, we saw soldiers armed with automatic rifles to our horror – which they were aiming at us. An armored car with a Bren machine-gun was parked in the middle of the road, behind the troops,” Tun Oo relates. “Spontaneously, we struck up our national anthem as well as the army song. Some shouted ‘Pyithu Tatmadaw (People’s Army) is our army!’ Then, we looked behind us. We were petrified. There were hundreds of Lon Htein in steel helmets and armed with clubs, rifles, and cane shields. To the left of us were the high walls of the houses in Kamayut Township, and to the right, a flight of steps leading up to the promenade along Inya Lake. We realized we were trapped. “until the bridge itself was red with the students’ blood"
Sein Lwin, known as the “butcher of Rangoon,” gave out the order to crack down on the protesters. The riot police then brutally cracked down on the protesters. Panic-stricken students, trying to escape up the flight of stairs towards the lake, fell in the ditches. Some Lon Htein cracked down on the girls in the crowd, snatching their jewelry and watches. Other policemen chased students into the dark waters of Inya Lake, overpassed them, forced their heads underwater, and held them there until they drowned. Among them, the more fortunate demonstrators, Tun Oo, managed to scale the walls of the houses on the left where outraged civilians, who had witnessed the carnage, hid them in their houses. The White Bridge incident reflected the merciless actions of the Burmese military and the lengths they would go to secure their power.
August 8, 1988
People called for a general and a nationwide strike on August 8, 1988, reportedly due to the date’s favorable numerology. Mass demonstrations were held simultaneously across the country becoming known as the 8888 Uprising.
The initial protests in August 1988 were organized largely by university students at the Rangoon Arts and Sciences University (RASU) and the Rangoon Institute of Technology (RIT). However, after the military retreated to its barracks, the demonstrations grew to include doctors, lawyers, housewives, civil servants, wage laborers, and even some military personnel. Meanwhile, high school and university students established unions, some of which expanded into city-wide and regional networks.
Hospital sources estimated to diplomats in Rangoon that more than 1,000 people died within five days of demonstrations. By the end of 1988, an estimated 10,000 people were killed as a result of brutal crackdowns.
As many as 10,000 students fled to areas controlled by armed ethnic nationalist groups to take up arms against the regime. The majority joined the All-Burma Students’ Democratic Front (ABSDF). Fearful of losing their livelihoods, most civil servants returned to work.
September 18, 1988
On September 18, 1988, the army forcibly retook control of the cities and towns. Army chief General Saw Maung declared martial law and the creation of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC, or Na Wa Ta), a collective of senior military officers who would form a “transitional” military government—and whose successor, the military State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), ruled Burma till 2010. Through military brutality and a shoot-to-kill policy against protesters, the SLORC managed to deter further street protests. People estimated the number of people killed to be ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 people with 3,000 deaths being a commonly accepted figure.
Students Arrested
By the end of 1989, the main leaders of the 1988 protests had been illegally detained (in some cases for up to two years) and eventually sentenced. Mya Aye and Ant Bwe Kyaw served 8 years in prison. Pyone Cho served 14 years. Min Ko Naing spent 14 years in solitary confinement. The names of other young people who were arrested, interrogated, tortured, and imprisoned are too numerous to be listed. Many didn’t make it past the prisons.
When many of the student leaders were finally released in the early 2000s, they began meeting again at local tea shops to discuss politics as they did in their university days. They eventually formed the 88 Generation. The same group of men and women who organized the 1988 protests also staged the first demonstration that eventually led to the Saffron Revolution in 2007. The leaders of the 88 Generation were subsequently rearrested and sentenced to over 65 years in prison.
The significance of the 8888 uprisings is that the student leaders arrested in 1988 became lifelong activists and politicians which made up the 88 Generation Students Group which would become a potent political force in Myanmar affairs. The 8888 uprisings also highlighted the National League for Democracy (NLD) as the main opposition party of the military junta. A period of isolation and oppression initiated by the Ne Win regime was exacerbated by the SLORC and the SPDC.