Troops Sent to Suu Kyi’s Home; Myanmar Universities Closed

Hundreds of troops were deployed today in front of the Yangon house of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, an Asian diplomat said from the Myanmar capital.

“Three military trucks filled with soldiers were deploying on the road in front of the house of Aung San Suu Kyi this morning,” the diplomat told Reuters news agency by telephone from Myanmar, formerly Burma.

He estimated the number of soldiers at 300.

Other sources said that a dozen guards were usually posted near the house, where the dissident democracy campaigner has been confined since July, 1989.

On Wednesday, troops with bayonets and barbed wire barricaded Yangon University and arrested students during a second day of pro-democracy protests, residents of the capital said.

Myanmar’s ruling military junta shut down all of the country’s universities.

Soldiers, backed by riot police with shields and batons, prevented people from approaching the campus in northern Yangon throughout Wednesday afternoon and into the evening, residents reached by telephone from Bangkok said.

Official Radio Yangon, which reported that all colleges, universities and technical schools would be closed today, said the university’s rector and his staff had been able to calm the students. It made no mention of army intervention.

Hundreds of students had demonstrated inside Yangon University Tuesday, calling for the release of Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi’s British husband, Michael Aris, and their two sons accepted the Peace Prize in Oslo on her behalf Tuesday.