Vigorous Student Burmese Warriors dismiss Burmese regime’s accusations

DVB ( August 6,2003)

The Vigorous Student Burmese Warriors has issued a statement today and dismissed the accusations of the SPDC during its news conference on the 26th of July as baseless.

The group achieved the notoriety after the siege of the Burmese embassy in Bangkok during October 1999 but no one knows where it is based currently. The statement says that the group is at a secret location close to Burma.

The extraordinary thing about the statement is – the group does not distance itself from other opposition groups but insists that it has no intention to hurt the people of Burma.

But it claims that it would use every means including violence to hurt the Burmese generals, and when fighting the common enemy, the SPDC generals, the arguments on whether to use violence or not are insulting to the sacrifices of the warriors, warns the statement.

The warriors’ main targets are the SPDC generals and the group warns people not to be near them. Moreover, the group will intensify its fights against the junta on the 8th of August as it is the 15th anniversary of the 8888 nationwide uprising in Burma, warns the group’s statement on the internet.

With the statement, the audio file of Ko Yae Thiha, the leader of the group was also enclosed. He expresses the main points of the group as follows:

Ko Yae Thiha : After the warriors learnt about the Dipeyin incident with the rest of the world, we have been sharing the sorrows more intensely with the people of Burma. We are planning to fight the regime together with the people. As for the people of Burma, don’t just sit and wait for the answer. Nurture the courage to face the odds and fight for your country with courage. In the situation like this, the international community could only help us partly. It is time for students, politicians, organisations and all the people inside the country to fight bravely and adventurously. As for the warriors, we will be mainly targeting the generals who have been holding on to power and controlling the country and we will keep on fighting them.

Political observers are quite interested in the statement of the group after Ko Johnny who led the siege of the Burmese embassy in Bangkok was assassinated and the activities of the group calmed down. Moreover, observers are more interested by the fact that according to the accusations of the SPDC’s news conference on the 26th of July, the group’s leader Ko Yae Thiha disguised himself as a lady-boy and visited Rangoon during April.