By Lay Myar/Kantarawaddy Times
A students’ association boycotting the military regime has called on students not to return to regime-controlled schools while the dictatorship in Burma is still in place. After learning that some of them plan to return to classes in 2022-23, the Civil Disobedience Movement Students Supporting Team (CSST) has urged everyone to continue resisting the regime.
“We don’t want them to return to classes in the coming academic years. That’s why we’ve issued a statement,” the CSST chairperson told Kantarawaddy Times.
A teacher from the Kayah State All Teachers Union, who’s joined the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), said they’re trying to convince parents to enrol their children in the schools supported by the interim National Unity Government in areas controlled by the ethnic armed organisations. Parents are worried about their children, many of whom haven’t received schooling for two and half years because of the pandemic and the coup.
Poe Reh, who lives in a Karenni internally displaced persons camp, told Kantarawaddy Times that he has to send his youngest child to grade four in one camp and the older children to grade seven and eight in another.
“We have to send and pick them up from the different schools with no security in the area.”
He’s worried about their education after withdrawing them from government schools shortly after the military coup just over a year ago.
The CSST chairperson says that although the military regime is opening schools all over the country, this is just a political move to lure the students back to classes but they don’t care about their education.
In Karenni State, the junta is opening schools in areas under its control in Loikaw, Bawlakhe and Maese townships.
Fighting in Burma’s smallest state is still taking place on a daily basis. Already 200,000 people have been displaced by the conflict.
