Still, he may take some comfort from the fact that the University of Pathein has finally reopened and is thronged with students, who, on the Saturday evening I was there, crowded the teashops along the road leading to the campus gates, chatting, reading, flirting and listening to noisy music as students do the world over.

CNN: From Our Correspondent: Pathein's Four Just Men

But in the teashops of Yangon, Myanmar's biggest city, the talk two decades on is not of sanctions but of the need for dialogue, of frustration with the main opposition party, the National League for Democracy, and even with its detained leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and of the widening gap between those who oppose the junta from abroad and those who live under its thumb.

ECONOMIST: Hopes for change have yielded to despair