Myanmar junta admits used tear gas, warning shots

Aung Hla Tun, Reuters

Published: Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Buddhist monks march through the streets of Yangon September 18, 2007. Buddhist monks staged protest marches in at least two cities, including Yangon and Sittwe, in Myanmar on Tuesday, the day a reported religious boycott of members of the ruling military junta and their associates was due to start. REUTERS/Democratic Voice of Burma

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Buddhist monks march through the streets of Yangon September 18, 2007. Buddhist monks staged protest marches in at least two cities, including Yangon and Sittwe, in Myanmar on Tuesday, the day a reported religious boycott of members of the ruling military junta and their associates was due to start. REUTERS/Democratic Voice of Burma

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's military junta said on Wednesday it had used tear gas and fired warning shots to disperse a crowd of 1,000 Buddhist monks and civilians protesting in the northwestern coastal city of Sittwe.

The admission on state-owned MRTV and in official newspapers was a thinly veiled warning to the former Burma's 53 million people after a month of protests against decades of military rule and soaring fuel and food prices.

"Some protesters, including six monks holding sticks and swords, hit the officials with their weapons," said the New Light of Myanmar, one of the regime's main mouthpieces.

"The protesters became very violent. So in order to control situation, the officials threw a teargas bomb into the group and opened fire in the air to threaten them," it added.

The increasing involvement of monks, key players in a 1988 mass uprising, is a sign the dissent that broke out last month over shock fuel price rises is intensifying.

Throughout four weeks of sporadic demonstrations, the military has been at pains to keep itself in the background, although soldiers did fire warning shots at one monk protest in the central town of Pakokku two weeks ago.

Then, the action by the army -- held responsible for the deaths of up to 3,000 people when it crushed the 1988 uprising -- caused hundreds of young monks to seize government officials the next day and torch four of their vehicles.

Instead of troops, the generals have favored civilian gangs and members of its feared Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) social network.

MONKS ON THE MARCH

Although Tuesday's marches fell far short of a nationwide boycott, monks marched in seven towns and cities, including Yangon, the commercial hub of one of Asia's brightest prospects when it won independence from Britain in 1948.

After more than 45 years of unbroken military rule and economic mismanagement, it is now one of the region's poorest countries.

In Yangon, authorities closed the famed Shwedagon Pagoda, the Southeast Asian nation's holiest shrine, minutes before hundreds of monks arrived for the formal launch of a campaign to refuse to accept alms from anyone connected to the regime.

Such a boycott is taken extremely seriously in the devoutly Buddhist country. Without such rites, a Buddhist loses all chance of attaining nirvana, or release from the cycle of rebirth.

Plainclothes police and USDA members shadowed the monks along their route, taking photographs and video, but there was no trouble and no arrests, witnesses said.

Monks launched a similar religious boycott in 1990 shortly after the generals refused to honor the results of a general election they had lost by a landslide.

The monks' protest coincided with demonstrations at Chinese diplomatic missions across the United States on Tuesday, urging Beijing to use its influence with Myanmar to free political prisoners and end violence against minorities.

Dozens of Myanmar exiles and American activists sought to use the publicity of the 2008 Beijing Olympics to highlight Chinese support for the junta.

"This regime has survived to this day because of Chinese government support -- financial, diplomatic and military," said Aung Din, policy director at the U.S. Campaign for Burma, at a

protest in Washington.

China has sold millions of dollars of arms to Myanmar and is a big importer of its timber, minerals and oil.

A high-profile Olympics-linked campaign for the victims of the deadly conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan, another Chinese friend and oil supplier, prodded Beijing to begin to help international efforts to stop the carnage there.

(Additional reporting by Paul Eckert in Washington) © Reuters 2007

The Fighting Monks of Burma

By HANNAH BEECH

Nearly 400 Burmese Buddhist monks march through Yangon to protest the military junta's alleged use of violence against Buddhist monks at Pakoku, a site in the upper part of Myanmar.

EPA

Saffron robes usually evoke spiritual calm. But for Burma's military leaders, a surprise gathering of monks is anything but peaceful. On Wednesday in the commercial capital Rangoon, hundreds of Buddhist clergy gathered around the nation's beloved Shwedagon pagoda to protest August price hikes that are pummeling an already impoverished populace. More than a thousand monks also rallied in other parts of the country, their daily alms routes turned into paths of protest.

Wednesday's demonstrations cap what has turned into the longest sustained display of dissent in Burma in nearly two decades. At first, the ruling junta, which has maintained an iron grip for 45 years, tried to extinguish the protest movement by arresting dozens of pro-democracy activists. But clapping handcuffs on Buddhist monks is a far more difficult proposition in this deeply devout nation. "The monks are the only ones who really have the trust of the people," says Khin Omar, an exiled dissident now living in Thailand. "When they speak up, people listen."

Unluckily for the junta, the monks have been speaking up ever more loudly. On September 5, protests by clergy members in the holy city of Pakokku turned violent when security forces fired warning shots in the air, only to have the monks respond by taking officials hostage and torching their cars.

Unholy behavior, perhaps. But the incident prompted senior spiritual leaders to demand an apology from the government by Sept. 17 or else rallies would resume. On Tuesday, with no apology in sight, the monks began marching anew.

The spectacle of more shaven-headed youth crowding the streets must send chills down the ruling generals' spines. After all, it was Burma's monks who spearheaded acts of civil disobedience against British colonialists. Buddhist clergy were also at the forefront of mass protests in 1988, which ended when the army gunned down hundreds of peaceful protestors and declared martial law. So far, the military has avoided firing directly at the monks. But with these spiritual warriors showing no sign of giving up their cause, a violent confrontation may be unavoidable.