Myanmar blocks student protest march

Police are preventing student protesters from marching to Yangon to push for educational reform.

Truckloads of police have prevented hundreds of student protesters from marching to Myanmar's biggest city to push for educational reform.

Students have been marching from Myanmar's second-largest city of Mandalay to Yangon, the old capital, since January, demanding changes to an education law that they say inhibits academic freedom.

The demonstrators have spent the last 10 days in Letpadan, about 145 kilometres north of Yangon, and had planned to resume their rally on Monday.

But they woke up to find more than a dozen police vehicles, including a water cannon truck, parked outside the monastery where they were staying.

The government warned the students last week that if they continued with the protest, action would be taken "to maintain law and order, security and tranquillity."


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Source: AAP


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