(Kao Wao: November 17, 2003)

The Burmese community in Fort Wayne, Indiana, hosted a meeting to support their student army, which fights against the military regime in Burma.

According to a source from a former member, over 100 ABSDF members joined a meeting on November 16 to welcome Chairman Ko Than Khe and, as a result, it founded a support group. The former ABSDF members handed the funds they have collected to the current Chairman.

Ko Than Khe said that Burma is a multi-ethnic country and ABSDF, as a multi-ethnic organization, accepts the different culture and history of ethnic people and supports their movement.

The former first Chairman Htun Aung Gyaw delivered a speech and urged the former freedom fighters not to forget the struggle for democracy and their comrades who are still fighting in the jungle.

According to Gyaw, the past ABSDF have more members but the leaders lacked unity while the present central committee who has fifteen years of experience is more united.

The ABSDF (All Burma Students Democratic Front), known as a Burma's student army, was founded when thousands students fled to the jungle in 1988 uprising after the bloody coup by the military regime in Burma.