Vigorous Burmese Student Warriors

The Vigorous Burmese Student Warriors (VBSW) is a Burmese terrorist organization opposed to the military junta that rules Myanmar (formerly Burma); the group is best known for a 1999 attack on Myanmar's consulate in Bangkok, Thailand.

In August 1988, student protests helped bring about the downfall of the Burmese dictator Ne Win; the following year, however, a coalition of Burmese military forces calling themselves the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC; the name has since been changed to the State Peace and Development Council, or SPDC) took control of the country in a bloody coup, renaming it Myanmar. The SPDC reluctantly allowed elections in 1990. When the elections resulted in a landslide victory for the National League for Democracy (NLD), a student-backed group led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the junta ignored the results. Suu Kyi was held under house arrest until 2002.

Since 1990, many of the former student radicals have fled Myanmar for neighboring Thailand. From exile, they have continued their political opposition to the regime, but they have done so peacefully as the All Burma Students Democratic Front. In late August 1999, a small group of Burmese student activists frustrated with peaceful protest formed the VBSW; the VBSW released a manifesto that suggests a core of 18 members, including San Naing (aka Yi Thiha), who had hijacked a Myanmar domestic flight and diverted it to Thailand in 1989. Some observers believe Naing to be the group's leader.

On the morning of October 1, 1999, five VBSW members raided the consulate of Myanmar in Bangkok, Thailand, taking 89 hostages, including 14 Westerners. The group then made a number of sweeping demands that, most observers believe, it knew had little chance of being met: the release of all Burmese political prisoners, the opening of negotiations between the NDL and the SPDC, and the convening of a Parliament based on the results of the 1990 elections. The group later admitted that its true goal had been to focus international attention on Burma. After a few hours, the hostage takers backed down from their initial demands, and the hostages were freed unharmed within two days. VBSW members were allowed to flee by helicopter to the remote jungle along the Thailand-Myanmar border. Following the crisis, some of the hostages and two Thai government officials expressed sympathy for the terrorists, though characterizing their actions as misguided. These comments severely strained Myanmar-Thai relations for the next several months.

After the VBSW members escaped, they linked up with members of God's Army, a small band of ethnic Karen guerrillas led by twin adolescent boys who had been fighting the Myanmar Army since 1997. In late 1999, the Myanmar military began a series of assaults on the groups' camp, pushing them further into Thai territory. Reluctant to become further involved in Myanmar's conflicts and angered over the death of [Page 396]four of its soldiers in a land-mine incident, the Thai Army began shelling the guerrillas from the rear. The guerrillas responded by seizing a hospital in Ratchaburi, Thailand, on January 24, 2000, taking several hundred hostages. The mixed force of God's Army and VBSW members demanded that their soldiers be allowed to retreat into Thailand and receive medical care there. On January 25, Thai security forces launched a commando raid on the hospital compound, freeing all the hostages and killing all 10 terrorists. Some witnesses, including former hostages, claimed that the terrorists were executed after they had surrendered.

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