Myanmar junta, fearing monks' protests, demonstrates fealty to Buddhism

YANGON, Myanmar: Myanmar's military government, widely condemned for its heavy-handed crackdown on anti-government protests by Buddhist monks, has been making high-profile donations to monasteries, the state-controlled press reported Wednesday.

The junta's top officials in the central area around the city of Mandalay donated cooking oil to 102 monasteries, the New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported on its front page, showing photos of kneeling officials offering gifts to senior monks. Making donations to temples is a traditional way of showing respect and making merit.

The move follows a security clampdown on monasteries in an attempt to keep young monks from joining weeks of protests that began Aug. 19 over high prices for fuel and consumer goods.

The protests are the most sustained challenge in a decade to the government. More than 100 people have been detained for taking part in demonstrations, many of which have been broken up by pro-government toughs.

In northern Myanmar last week, monks — angry at being beaten up for protesting economic conditions — temporarily took officials hostage and later smashed a shop and a house belonging to junta supporters.

A nervous government responded by tightening security around monasteries in major cities, including Yangon, Mandalay and Bago.

Monks in Myanmar, also known as Burma, have historically been at the forefront of protests — first against British colonialism and later military dictatorship. They also played a prominent part in the failed 1988 pro-democracy rebellion that sought an end to military rule, imposed since 1962. The uprising was brutally crushed by the military.

According to unconfirmed reports circulated in the Myanmar exile opposition press, monks have said they may refuse alms from the military and ignore junta officials and their supporters at official functions if the government fails to apologize by next week for the mistreatment of monks during a protest last week in the northern town of Pakokku.

The monks — said to have united in a new group called the National Front of Monks — are also demanding that authorities cut fuel prices, release all political prisoners and begin negotiations with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other pro-democracy leaders.

The New Light of Myanmar has made officials' activities at temples its top front page story two days in a row.

Its report Wednesday said donations of edible oil and cash were made to monasteries in the Mandalay area by the junta's commander for the central region, Maj. Gen. Khin Zaw, as well as Minister for Industry-1 Aung Thaung and other officials.

On Tuesday, the newspaper highlighted a visit by a top defense ministry official, Lt. Gen. Myint Swe, to a senior abbot at a temple in Yangon.

The respectful actions are likely to be appreciated by senior monks at the country's monasteries, to whom younger monks are supposed to be deferential.

Monks are highly respected by most people in the predominantly Buddhist nation, and using force to disperse them has upset the public.

On Tuesday, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the American government was concerned about the "well-being" of more than 150 citizens jailed since the Aug. 19 demonstrations began.

"Multiple reports indicate that many of these protesters have been brutally beaten and interrogated," McCormack said in a statement. "We call upon the Burmese regime to allow access to prisoners by international humanitarian organizations, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, and renew our call for the immediate release of all political prisoners in Burma."

Myanmar monks seek apology from junta

BANGKOK: Buddhist monks in military-ruled Myanmar have threatened to stop accepting alms from soldiers unless the junta apologises for beating the clergy last week, reports from dissident media said Tuesday.

A boycott of alms from soldiers would be a serious protest toward the military since giving donations to monks is an important spiritual duty for devout Buddhists. The Thailand-based Irrawaddy magazine reported that a group calling itself the “Alliance of All Burma Buddhist Monks” was distributing a leaflet calling for the boycott unless the junta issues an apology by September 17.

Exiled dissidents have reported that several new groups of monks have formed to make similar demands of the military, but it is impossible to confirm their existence inside the country. Few monks are willing to speak openly about politics and the military has cut the phone lines of several key pro-democracy supporters. Myanmar’s influential clergy was enraged last Wednesday when soldiers and state-backed militia beat a crowd of some 300 monks who were protesting in the central city of Pakokku. The following day, the monks held a group of 20 government officials hostage for several hours and then trashed a store and a home belonging to militia leaders. afp

Burma Protests Draw Harsh Crackdown

Torture Is Reported as More Than 150 Are Detained; U.N. to Dispatch Envoy

By Nora Boustany
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 12, 2007; Page A14

Recent protests in Burma by democracy activists, defiant monks and other citizens objecting to an unprecedented spike in fuel prices have sparked a brutal crackdown by the country's ruling military junta and cast a new spotlight on the gravity of conditions in the resource-rich country.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced Monday that he was dispatching his special adviser on Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, to hold talks with the military rulers. The announcement came after the United Nations' independent expert on human rights in Burma, Geneva-based Paulo S?rgio Pinheiro, disclosed that he had received reports of severe beatings and torture of detainees from this latest sweep of arrests. Amnesty International said more than 150 people have been detained since Aug. 19.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said yesterday in a statement that the United States was concerned about the fate of those detainees. "Multiple reports indicate that many of these protesters have been brutally beaten and interrogated," McCormack said. He called on the junta to allow access to them by human rights groups and the International Red Cross and to release all political prisoners.

The rare demonstrations and unrest across the closed country, also known as Myanmar, were sparked by an overnight increase Aug. 19 of up to 500 percent in fuel prices, which left public transportation and basic consumer goods unaffordable to much of the impoverished population.

Monks joined the protests late last week, which brought monasteries and temples under scrutiny by soldiers searching for evidence of incitement. Angry at being beaten with bamboo poles, some monks took 13 officials hostage in the central city of Pakokku as 500 of the clergymen in orange robes marched peacefully. Government troops and hired gunmen blocked the protesters, Radio Free Asia reported from Bangkok. One monk told the radio service that attackers rounded up fleeing monks with lassos and beat them with truncheons and rifle butts.

Similar incidents involving monks elsewhere in the country seemed to add popular legitimacy to the uprising.

Monks go out daily with bowls to beg for food from the population, which supports them. Over the weekend, they reportedly formed a group called the National Front of Monks and demanded that the junta express regrets over the violence, reduce fuel prices, which previously were subsidized, and begin negotiations with the opposition National League for Democracy and the 88 Generation Students movement. An uprising in 1988 was brutally crushed by the military, and some veterans of that protest formed the 88 Generation Students group.

President Bush and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown have decried the heavy-handed tactics against political prisoners and citizens and called on Burma's leadership to heed international calls to free democracy activists. First lady Laura Bush also weighed in last week, urging the world community to do something to alleviate the suffering of the Burmese and to gain the release Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent 12 years under detention or house arrest.

Like Sudan's troubled Darfur region, Burma has become a cause for celebrities and activists, who are calling attention to the junta's excesses through such means as the video-sharing YouTube Web site and global letter-writing campaigns. Last Thursday, 25 Hollywood stars, including actors Jim Carrey and Dustin Hoffman, called on the United Nations to put more pressure on the junta to release Suu Kyi, whose party won 1990 elections but was blocked from taking power by the military. Owen Wilson, Susan Sarandon and Jennifer Aniston were among those joining the petition.

Analysts agree that the United States and Western powers can do little to persuade Burmese military leaders to lessen their hold over the population, saying the main pressure would have to come from countries such as China and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. While the United States has an embassy in Rangoon, no U.S. official is allowed to engage military or top political leaders there.

Priscilla Clapp, the former attache at the U.S. Embassy in Burma, said the recent riots were significant, though still not as widespread as the 1988 student protests. In an interview yesterday, she said she sensed strain within the Burmese leadership and found the precipitous withdrawal of fuel subsidies "extremely suspicious."

Clapp said country's rulers, in their new capital Naypyidaw, which translates as "abode of kings," had lost touch with citizens. "Sitting in this golden bunker, in their little palaces," the generals "don't comprehend or fully appreciate the economic distress the population is under," she said.

Five of Burma's top generals are said to be sick, and for popular protests to continue after the arrests means that "people sense the regime is creaky," Clapp said. "I think the current regime is shaky. Corruption is massive."

Burma's prospects as a regional energy supplier appeared to brighten recently, with neighbors India and China vying for its natural gas reserves, some of which are offshore in the Bay of Bengal. China recently struck two deals with the Burmese government, one for a pipeline from a port that would receive oil tankers from the Middle East to service China's oil-starved southwestern regions, and another for natural gas.

Clapp said a combination of Chinese pressure and internal decay may be the only way to bring about change in Burma.

"I am sure the Chinese know that the U.S. is looking their way to talk to the Burmese," she said. "Long-term transition has to come from inside. We can't affect what is going on right now except rhetorically, and we should."