Myanmar varsity expels 14 students for staging protest

YANGON, Jan 27 (AFP): Fourteen students have been expelled from a Myanmar university after staging a campus protest calling for more education funding, an activist said Saturday, sparking concern over eroding freedoms in the fledgling democracy.

The four-day rally at Yadanabon University in Mandalay drew some 100 students before it was broken up by police on January 25.

It was the first student protest under Aung San Suu Kyi's civilian administration, which took power in early 2016.

Students were key drivers of political activism under the former military regime, which violently cracked down on dissent during its 50-year reign.

Many had hoped Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate and former political prisoner, would usher in a new era of freedom.

But a rash of defamation cases and arrests of journalists, plus lingering censorship in the arts, have dampened optimism and triggered alarm that freedoms are backsliding.

The latest case to draw rebuke was the expulsion of 14 students in Mandalay, who participated in the rally calling for more national spending on education.

"We... were given a letter saying that we were expelled for breaking regulations," Kyaw Thiha Ye Kyaw, a 22-year-old law student at Yadanabon, told AFP.