Sunday 22 June 2008
Myanmar monks lead the protest in Burma Yangon
DEMONSTRATIONS led by Buddhist monks in military-ruled Myanmar (formerly Burma) gathered force over the weekend and, on Monday September 24th, the biggest protest yet seen was staged in the main city, Yangon. Up to 100,000 people took part, among them perhaps 20,000 red- and orange-robed monks. The website of Irrawaddy, a newspaper run by Burmese exiles from Thailand, reported an equally huge monk-led protest on Monday in the western town of Sittwe.
At first, the monks limited themselves to chanting prayers and sermons, and urged the Burmese public not to join their marches. But over the weekend, a hitherto unknown group, the All Burma Monks’ Alliance, urged people to “struggle peacefully against the evil military dictatorship” until its downfall. Monday’s march was joined by some of the country’s best-known actors and musicians, as well as leaders of the opposition National League of Democracy (NLD) and crowds of ordinary Burmese. It has become the biggest challenge Myanmar’s brutal regime has faced since the uprising of 1988, which it crushed with extreme violence. The question is: how will it respond this time? Later on Monday, state-run media quoted the government as threatening the monks with unspecified action "according to the law" if their protests did not stop.
The protests began last month, when the government suddenly imposed drastic rises in fuel prices, making life even more unbearable for Myanmar’s impoverished people. The regime arrested many protest leaders and sent in plain-clothes goon squads to attack the demonstrators. It looked like the protests might fizzle until, earlier this month, soldiers fired over the heads of a group of monks demonstrating in the central town of Pakkoku. Some reports said monks were also beaten and arrested. After the regime ignored the clergy’s demands for an apology, monks took to the streets in several main cities. They have now, in effect, excommunicated the military and their families by refusing to accept alms from them—a serious matter in this devoutly Buddhist country.
So far the regime has seemed unsure how to react. Early last week it fired warning shots and tear-gas canisters at a monks’ protest in Sittwe but since then it has taken no action against the demonstrations. For two days it barred monks from the golden Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, the country’s holiest shrine. But since Thursday it has allowed them back into the shrine, which has become the focal point for the protest movement. On Saturday, police let thousands of monks and laymen pray outside the home of Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the NLD and icon of Myanmar’s struggle for democracy. Though Miss Suu Kyi is under house arrest, she was able to walk to her gate and greet the protesters. But by Sunday, the police were once again barring access to the street where she lives.
Besides their strength in numbers—there are 400,000 of them—the monks have considerable influence. They are the one group that the military regime might hesitate to confront. Even so, another 1988-style bloody crackdown cannot be ruled out. The question that the generals will be asking themselves is how the rest of the world would react. Though the regime has for decades brushed aside Western sanctions and resisted all pressure to reform, some things have changed since 1988.
One is that Myanmar has been admitted to the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). The other ASEAN members argued that “constructive engagement” with Myanmar would achieve more than sanctions. This has proved a sham because they failed to apply enough pressure on its regime. But there is at least some hope that they may now discourage the regime from massacring the protesters, if only to spare themselves the embarrassment of sitting alongside generals with fresh blood on their hands as they celebrate ASEAN’s 40th anniversary later this year.
More on http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9857031
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