YANGON - Burma's junta staged a massive pro-government rally in its main city on Saturday and arrested a top dissident as its relentless and ruthless response to last month's pro-democracy uprising showed no signs of easing.
Htay Kywe, a prominent student activist from an uprising in 1988, was detained overnight with three other people in one of the many raids still being conducted by police more than two weeks after soldiers were sent in to crush demonstrations.
The 39-year-old, a leading light in the so-called "88 Generation Students Group", had managed to remain at large since 13 of his comrades were arrested in a series of midnight swoops on Aug. 21.
"They had felt the net closing in for several days," a close friend, now in exile, told Reuters in Bangkok.
Despite some concessions to the international outrage at the crackdown, in which at least 10 people died, the former Burma's ruling generals are cranking up the pressure on the domestic front.
After three weeks of provincial pro-government "rallies" -- turgid, stage-managed affairs at which attendance is compulsory -- the junta brought its roadshow to a sports ground in Yangon, the main city and former capital.
Tens of thousands of people from government organisations, private factories and nearby suburbs sat through drizzle to voice choreographed support for the junta's "roadmap to democracy" and a constitution-drafting National Convention.
"The delegates just read out everything written by the authorities," one attendee told Reuters. "It was the usual stuff -- support the National Convention and condemn the so-called 'destructive elements'."
In junta-speak, 'destructive elements' means anybody wanting to bring an end to 45 years of military rule and economic stagnation in a country that ranked as one of Asia's brightest prospects shortly after independence from Britain in 1948.
