September 11: Bangkok: His name does not carry the same aura as Burma’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Yet, to his fellow citizens, the 42-year-old Min Ko Naing is just as significant as ‘The Lady’.

”After Aung San Suu Kyi, Min Ko Naing is the most respected leader inside Burma,” says Zin Lin of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, the military-ruled, South-east Asian country’s government-in-exile.

Min Ko Naing, a former Rangoon University student, gained stature by standing up to his country’s oppressive military regime. In August 1988, he led students in a pro-democracy uprising that resulted in a harsh crackdown, with hundreds shot dead by government troops.

He was arrested in March 1989 for his political activity and thrown into jail for 20 years, but his release in November last year, after over 15 years of solitary confinement, triggered hope among some Burmese political activists that he would, once again, rise to becoming a catalyst for change.

Min Ko Naing may have done just that with a statement released this week, which has created ripples among a broad swathe of Burmese political exiles. He appealed to the international donor community to return to the military-ruled country, rather than forsake it.

His statement, delivered with the backing of other former Burmese student leaders like him, has brought to the open a contentious issue that critics of Rangoon’s oppressive rulers have been grappling with for years with little outcome.

These critics, who form a large part of Burma’s political exiles, have favoured the harsh sanctions imposed on Rangoon by the United States government and the European Union. They have also rebuked any international humanitarian initiatives they felt would benefit the military regime.

A run-up to a meeting, at the beginning of this month, in Britain mirrored such sentiments. Burmese political exiles expressed disapproval of the Sep. 4-6 gathering, organised by the British government, stating that the event, due to bring together sympathisers of Burma’s opposition parties and defenders of Rangoon’s junta for a discussion, would only benefit the latter.

The exiles expressed similar criticism over a previous meeting held in April in Brussels, since that gathering, they argued, was an attempt to get the E.U. to engage with Rangoon rather than condemn the junta for its atrocities and to boycott Burma until there was political reform.

Yet, Min Ko Naing received support when, he and other student leaders, made a statement Wednesday on the need for humanitarian assistance to Burma. For that, cooperation was necessary among the military regime, the country’s opposition groups, U.N. agencies and international donors, declared the statement delivered by the ‘Student Generations Since 1988′.

Reaction by the Forum for Democracy in Burma (FDB), one of the groups championing the views of Burmese political exiles, illustrates this. ”(The FDB) ensures that those student leaders reflect the voices of the needy Burmese citizens since, they, are well aware of the real lives of their own people”, read a statement released Friday.

”Min Ko Naing’s statements carry weight because he is living with the reality inside Burma,” Aung Zaw, editor of ‘The Irrawaddy’, a news magazine on Burmese affairs published by exiles in Thailand, said in IPS interview. ”It is also very brave, what he said to the international community–we need aid.”

Yet, by entering the controversy about humanitarian aid to Burma, the former student leaders demonstrate that ”they have matured,” adds Aung Zaw. ”They are trying to create a new political space for all the parties involved in Burma, including the military government, to cooperate on aid and assistance”.

The appeal, made by so important a political figure, comes at a time when the junta is facing a mounting humanitarian crisis at home. In August, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria quit the country in protest because of government interference with its nearly 100 million US dollars worth of health prevention programmes.

Burma has between 170,000 to 620,000 people living with HIV and, according to U.N. agencies, it has the second highest incidence rates of the killer disease in South-east Asia after Cambodia. Another deadly disease, tuberculosis (TB), is also widespread, with international health agencies saying that Burma has some 97,000 new TB cases every year.

Child malnutrition is as rampant, the World Food Programme reported in early August. Nearly a third of the country’s children are malnourished due to lack of food and extreme poverty, the U.N. food agency said.

So, too, acute cases of anaemia among mothers and children, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced this week. Parasitic infections remain a major cause of anaemia in Burma, said the U.N. agency, which has begun distributing nearly 70 million iron foliate tablets to 350,000 pregnant women across the country.

Burma’s steady decent into misery has been attributed largely to the policies of the junta. It has been compounded by the international donor community being averse to helping Burma due to the country’s gross human rights violations.

Since 1988, Burma has received little assistance from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

The consequences to the people appear to have moved Min Ko Naing. Burma needs aid desperately, not more arguments about the political significance of such aid, his group said in this week’s statement.

Cooperation with the military regime and the opposition parties were necessary to save Burma from a mounting humanitarian crisis, they added.

In doing so — and possibly prodding Burma down a new road of hope –the former student leaders are also living up to a role others like them have performed in Burma’s political history.

”There are three groups that have played a major role in shaping Burma’s politics,” Aung Naing Oo, a researcher at the Burma Fund, a Washington -based think tank, told IPS. ”They are Buddhist monks, the army and students.”

”Their reputations are untainted,” he added, referring to Min Ko Naing and the other members of the Students Generations Since 1988 group. ”They command a lot of respect from the army, the opposition parties and the people.”