ABSTRACT
General Ne Win had ruled the country ever since a military coup toppled Burma’s democratic regime in March 1962. Within months demonstrations by students and other activists grew to gigantic proportions. Declaring the city liberated and democratic, the revolutionaries apprehensively waited for the state’s response. Carrying flowers and trying to incite dialogue, the proponents of the Velvet Revolution marched in the nation’s cities. In the wake of Eastern European revolutions against Communism, and rampant local economic difficulties, many African nations saw increased pro-democracy campaigns for the establishment of multi-party political systems; student protests were on the rise in Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Togo, Zaire, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. In Czechoslovakia students led a different sort of revolution. In November 1989 university students staged a nonviolent demonstration in Wenceslas Square to commemorate the student martyrs of the 1968 Prague Spring.
