Myanmar frees most detained 8-8-88 marchers

Myanmar's military government has freed 43 of 48 activists arrested for a silent protest march marking the 20th anniversary of the brutally crushed "8-8-88" democracy uprising, the opposition said.

"Forty of them were freed late last night after questioning. They had to sign an undertaking," Thein Naing, a senior member of the opposition National League for Democracy in the northwest state of Rakhine, told Reuters.

"Five young men who played a leading role are still in custody. We don't know their fate yet," he added.

The protest in the town of Taunggok was virtually the only one in the former Burma in memory of the nationwide revolt, eventually crushed by the army with the loss of an estimated 3,000 lives.

Given last year's widespread fuel price protests, the junta was taking few chances with the anniversary, posting armed police and pro-government thugs at strategic sites in towns and cities.

Leaders of the 1988 uprising, the biggest challenge to army rule dating back to 1962, have been behind bars since the start of the fuel-price demonstrations last August. They are just a few of an estimated 1,100 political prisoners.

Outside the pariah Southeast Asian nation, however, human rights groups and activists who fled the 1988 bloodshed staged demonstrations near Myanmarese and Chinese embassies.

China was targeted on what was also the opening day of the Beijing Olympics because of its commercial and diplomatic ties to the generals, gate-keepers of Myanmar's plentiful reserves of natural gas and other resources.