Monks march anew through Myanmar's biggest city

By Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) - About 600 Buddhist monks marched through Yangon on Friday, the fourth straight day of anti-government protests in the largest city of army-ruled Myanmar.

The maroon-robed monks chanted prayers as they walked from the Shwedagon Pagoda, the holiest shrine in the country formerly known as Burma, to Yangon city hall where ordinary people linked hands to form a protective ring around them.

They met no opposition from watching plainclothes police.

A smaller march earlier near the Mai Lamu Pagoda on the outskirts of Yangon was cut short by heavy rains which have lashed the city for days.

Protest marches by monks are becoming a daily occurrence, a sign that what began as civilian anger at last month's shock fuel price rises is becoming a more deep-rooted religious movement against the generals and their 45-year rule.

More than 150 people have been arrested since the protests began, including two men who were sentenced to two years in prison for giving water to protesting monks in Sittwe in northwest Myanmar last month.

Relatives said the two men -- Maung Saw Thein, 40, and 36-year-old Han Min Lwin -- were freed on Friday after 1,000 monks had marched in Sittwe on Wednesday and threatened more protests unless they were released.

"They both are fine," one relative told Reuters.

The monks have discouraged ordinary people from joining their processions for fear of reprisals against civilians and to ensure the protests remain peaceful.

Memories of the nearly 3,000 people thought to have been killed in 1988 when soldiers crushed pro-democracy protests are still fresh on the streets of the former capital.

"We can't wait for a drastic and meaningful change to our livelihood," one construction worker said. "But we are not sure if the protests will really bring us the change we need."

In his neighbourhood on the outskirts of the city, the worker said, most people were too preoccupied with daily survival to join the protests.

"We earn just enough to survive if the whole family works the whole day," he said.

Nevertheless, several hundred people joined the 500 monks who prayed inside the Shwedagon on Thursday after being locked out for two days to prevent them launching a formal religious boycott of the junta.

Outside Yangon, more and more monasteries have formally refused to accept alms from the junta and their families, which is taken very seriously in the devoutly Buddhist country.

It amounts to excommunication since, without such rites, a Buddhist loses a key route to storing up merit and eventually escaping the cycle of rebirth and attaining nirvana.

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

Earlier the monasteries were key players in a nationwide uprising against military rule in 1988 and analysts say the generals have been at pains to treat the monks carefully this time around.

"All that is needed is an incident which will trigger the people's anger," a retired professor said.

"A bloody incident or violence or a very unacceptable measure can suddenly push the people onto the streets and join the monks," he said.

Monks in Myanmar March in Protest for Third Day

SETH MYDANS
Published Friday, September 21, 2007

Hundreds of Buddhist monks marched through rain-washed streets for the third day in Myanmar’s main city yesterday, taking the lead in monthlong protests that the military junta has so far been powerless to contain.

They prayed at the gold-spired Shwedagon Pagoda, the nation’s holiest shrine, then wound through the streets of the city, Yangon, before disbanding in late afternoon and announcing that they would march again, wire services reported.

The involvement of large numbers of monks has increased the challenge to the government in a nation where the Buddhist clergy is highly revered and is the most organized group apart from the military.

The current protests began after the government raised fuel prices on Aug. 15 without warning or explanation by as much as 500 percent.

At first, former student leaders and democracy advocates took the lead. But most have been arrested or are in hiding, and the protests appeared to be waning before the monks and monasteries became involved.

“The involvement of the monks is a significant escalation,” said David Steinberg, an expert on Myanmar at Georgetown University. “It shows that the frustration has increased, a political frustration as well as an economic frustration.”

Protests by monks have been reported in a number of other cities over the past three days. If the monks’ demonstrations continue, analysts said, the military junta will face a difficult decision over whether to crush them by force and risk a still greater public backlash.

According to reports from the scene, nearly 1,000 monks in their rust-red robes were joined yesterday by thousands of people who walked alongside them in the greatest sign of public participation since the protests began on Aug. 19.

Some onlookers offered snacks and drinks to the marchers and some bowed their heads and raised their clasped palms in a gesture of prayer, The Associated Press reported.

At least some monks were reportedly refusing to accept alms from members of the military, a refusal, known as “turning over the rice bowl,” that amounts to an ad-hoc gesture of excommunication. The A.P. reported that one monk at the head of the procession held a begging bowl upside down as he marched.

The Asian Human Rights Commission, an independent group based in Hong Kong, released what it said was a transcript of a public statement by monks in Yangon yesterday.

After condemning abuses of monks by the junta, the statement declares: “The clergy boycotts the violent, mean, cruel, ruthless, pitiless kings, the great thieves who live by stealing from the national treasury. The clergy hereby also refuses donations and preaching.”

Mr. Steinberg said the demonstrations appeared to involve younger monks rather than the hierarchy of the country’s religious establishment.

Monks have been at the forefront of protests in Myanmar since colonial times, before the country, then known as Burma, won independence from Britain in 1948. They were prominent, along with students, in the nationwide uprising of 1988 that was crushed by the military with the loss of thousands of lives.

In 1990, in a smaller failed uprising, thousands of monks joined demonstrations and refused to perform religious rites for soldiers or their families. Many hundreds were reportedly detained.

This time the junta has appeared reluctant to use force. The protests come at a time when Myanmar is trying to present itself to the world as a democratizing nation, with the adoption early this month of new constitutional guidelines.

The technology of rapid communication is spreading film and photographs of the demonstrations both within and outside the country, and the junta can no longer operate in the shadows as it did in the past. Two weeks ago, however, soldiers reportedly manhandled a group of protesting monks in Pakokku, near central Mandalay, and fired several shots into the air.

In response, some monks briefly kidnapped a group of officials at a monastery and vandalized buildings belonging to members of the government. The confrontation in Pakokku has apparently helped fuel the larger demonstrations that have taken place this week. They began after the government failed to offer an apology demanded by the Buddhist clergy.

Officials have mostly stood back as columns of barefoot monks paraded quickly through the streets this week. Plainclothes police officers and members of a government-backed vigilante force known as the Union Solidarity and Development Association have monitored the monks, filming and photographing them.

On Wednesday, the monks in Yangon were barred from entering the Shwedagon Pagoda and marched instead to the Sule Pagoda in the heart of the city, which they occupied briefly. On Tuesday, when 1,000 monks demonstrated in several cities, security officials reportedly used tear gas and fired warning shots to disperse monks in Sittwe, west of Yangon. According to reports received by exile groups in Thailand, some monks were beaten and arrested.

Thousands join Burma monks on protest march

Sep 21 2007

MONKS took to the streets in Burma’s largest city for a fourth straight day today, while the military junta insisted it has no plans to call a state of emergency to quell growing protests that pose the greatest threat to the regime in a decade.

Meanwhile, the UN Special Envoy to Burma Ibrahim Gambari told the Security Council in New York yesterday that recent protests and the military regime’s subsequent crackdowns raised “serious concerns” and underlined the urgency of resolving the political turmoil there. Gambari told the council in a closed door session he plans to visit Burma, also known as Myanmar, but has set no date.

“Undoubtedly, the developments over the last few weeks in Burma have raised serious concerns in the international community and once again underscore the urgency to step up our efforts to find solutions to the challenges facing the country,” Gambari told the council, according to a UN account of the closed session.

Braving driving rain, about 200 monks converged on Mei Lamu pagoda in north Okalapa on the outskirts of Rangoon, witness said.

After chanting sermons and praying for 15 minutes, the monks dispersed, witnesses said.

Monks defy Burma junta - and heavy rains - to march in protest for fourth day

(EPA)

Monks prayed at the Shwedagon Pagoda, the holiest temple of Burmese Buddhism, for 20 minutes in driving tropical rain

Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia Editor of The Times

Thousands of people, including saffron-robed Buddhist monks, marched through knee-deep rain water in the centre of Rangoon today, in the fourth successive day of peaceful protests against the country’s military dictatorship.

The protest — the largest act of defiance against the ruling junta in a decade — began with a few hundred monks, carrying Buddhist pennants, who walked barefoot to the golden Shwedagon Pagoda, Rangoon’s most famous landmark and the holiest temple of Burmese Buddhism.

After praying there for 20 minutes in driving tropical rain, their numbers grew as they continued to the commercial centre of Rangoon.

By the time they reached Rangoon City Hall, there was a crowd of 3,000 people, according to news agencies, half of them monks, the rest ordinary Burmese. At the front of the march was a human chain of 100 women, arm in arm, symbolically protecting the monks. They paused at the City Hall, chanting: “Peace and security will prevail. The people will not be harmed.”

Monks also held a public prayer meeting at a smaller pagoda on the outskirts of Rangoon, Burma’s former capital, as well as in the town of Pegu, 80km (50 miles) to the north.

There were no reports of injuries or arrests, and witnesses in Rangoon reported a less-obvious security presence than at some of the other demonstrations, which have taken place in cities across Burma since sudden rises in the prices of household goods last month.

Given the junta’s history of repression, there are fears that as the demonstrations grow in scale, so does the danger of a violent, even bloody, crackdown.

The BBC reported today that one activist organisation, the Alliance of All Burmese Buddhist Monks, had issued a strongly-worded statement describing the military government as "the enemy of the people".

In what the BBC said was the most explicit challenge yet to the Burmese government, the statement said that the monks would keep up their protests until they had "wiped the military dictatorship from the land of Burma".

Yesterday, the United Nations Special Envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, told the UN Security Council in New York of his alarm at the situation. “Undoubtedly, the developments over the last few weeks in Myanmar have raised serious concerns in the international community and once again underscore the urgency to step up our efforts to find solutions to the challenges facing the country,” he said.

Today a spokesman for the Government, which refers to the country by the name Myanmar, denied that it was considering drastic measures. “The Myanmar Government will not declare a state of emergency,” said Ye Htut, of the Information Ministry. “You can see the Government handles the situation peacefully.”

Thakin Chan Tun, a former Burmese ambassador and now an opponent of the junta, told The Irrawaddy, a dissident website in Thailand, that he anticipates a mass uprising. “Unless the Government wants to see a mass uprising, I want to urge them to enter into dialogue in order to solve the crisis in the country,” he said

The demonstrations were triggered in the middle of August when the Government raised the price of fuel oil by as much as 500 per cent. They were led by veterans of the 1988 struggle scores of whom were arrested; many more have gone into hiding. The authorities have cut off mobile telephone and land lines belonging to activists.

On September 5 hundred of monks who came out in support of the activists in the town of Pakokku were beaten up by soldiers and pro-Government militia men as they marched and chanted peacefully. When a delegation of government officials went to the pagoda to apologise, they were taken briefly hostage by the Buddhists.

Monks across the country reacted with fury, and senior abbots demanded an apology for the incident, setting this week as the deadline. If no apology is offered, they threatened to carry out further demonstrations and to refuse to accept alms from members of the military — a humiliating sanction amounting to excommunication. This week monks have marched with their alms bowls held upside down as a symbol of their boycott.

The present military leadership took over after the bloody suppression of nationwide democracy demonstrations in 1988 when an estimated 3,000 protesters died, many of them young students.

In response, the Government held democratic elections in 1990 which were won overwhelmingly by the National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, later winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. But the junta did not acknowledged the election results and has held on to power ever since, despite denunciations and appeals by Western governments and human rights organisations.

UN envoy warns of Myanmar crisis

A series of marches by Buddhist monks has given new life to anti-government protests [AFP] The wave of anti-government protests in Myanmar and the subsequent crackdown on protesters has raised "serious concerns" over the growing political crisis in the country, the United Nations special envoy has said. In what Britain's ambassador to the UN described as a "sobering briefing", Ibrahim Gambari told the Security Council in New York he planned to make a visit to Myanmar as soon as possible. He said recent developments "underscore the urgency to step up our efforts to find solutions to the challenges facing the country". Gambari's comments come amid growing tensions in Myanmar triggered by the government's decision last month to impose a sudden massive hike in the price of fuel. The price rise triggered a rare outpouring of public anger across Myanmar, the arrest of scores of pro-democracy activists and, more recently, the involvement of thousands of Buddhist monks. Myanmar protests Protest timeline Myanmar who's who Video: Life under military rule On Friday, reports from Myanmar said groups of Buddhist monks were gearing up for what would be a fourth straight day of protest marches against the government. Speaking after Gambari's closed-door briefing to the Security Council, Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador, said the escalating tensions in Myanmar "poses a threat to regional peace and stability". "We see a worsening of the political situation and that is affecting the well-being of the people of Burma and also having an impact on the region." He urged the military government of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, to allow a visit by the UN envoy "as soon as possible". "We certainly are appalled by the steps the regime has taken to silence peaceful protest and to clamp down on dissent" John Sawyers, British ambassador to the UN Britain's ambassador, John Sawyers, also backed an urgent visit by Gambari, saying the ruling generals' crackdown on dissent was a further setback for a country that has already become a pariah to much of the international community. "We certainly are appalled by the steps the regime has taken to silence peaceful protest and to clamp down on dissent," he said. He said Gambari would press for the immediate release of political prisoners, including Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for most of the past 17 years. Sawyers said the UN envoy would also be seeking an end to fighting against ethnic minority Karens and urge the ruling generals to introduce "a genuinely transparent political process". On Thursday, before Gambari's address, up to 5,000 Buddhist monks marched through Myanmar's biggest city, Yangon, on the third straight day of protests against the generals. Monks are revered by Myanmar's majority Buddhist population and their involvement in the protests poses a serious challenge for the military government. Giving alms Giving donations to monks is an important spiritual duty for devout Buddhists. Alms are given by lay people to monks to nurture merit; the gesture also connects the worshipper to the spirituality the monk represents. Without such rites a devout Buddhist is seen as losing all chance of attaining nirvana or release from the cycle of rebirth. The monks have also said they will boycott alms from members of the military and their families – an act considered a major snub for devout Buddhists. The monks have not chanted anti-government slogans during their marches, but carried an upside-down alms bowl, a widely-recognised symbol of protest in Myanmar. Monks were also reported to have joined protests in several other towns and cities across the country. The protests have become the most sustained challenge to Myanmar's military rulers since a wave of student demonstrations that were forcibly suppressed in December 1996. Reports in Myanmar's state-run media have blamed the protests on "bogus monks" and foreign instigators looking to stir up trouble.

Gambari advises dialogue over recent crackdown

Sep 21, 2007 (DVB)—UN special advisor on Burma Ibrahim Gambari told the Security Council yesterday that the world body had no choice but to continue efforts at dialogue with the Burmese military in the face of its recent crackdowns on peaceful protests.

According to a statement released by UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon’s spokesperson yesterday, Gambari told members of the council that he had no choice as special envoy to the country “but to persevere” with efforts towards dialogue.

“Undoubtedly the developments over the last few weeks in Myanmar have raised serious concerns in the international community and once again underscore the urgency to step up our efforts to find solutions to the challenges facing the country,” Gambari reportedly said.

Gambari’s stance is likely to be met with disappointment from lobby groups and activists working on Burma who have repeatedly called for Security Council action against the military government in the past few weeks.

Many of the monks who have taken part in protests in Burma this week have also called on the UN to take action to prevent further state-sanctioned violence against peaceful protests. High-profile US lobby group, the US Campaign for Burma, has released several statements saying that the time for UN talks on the situation in the country ended long ago.

“United Nations leaders and mechanisms must not be complacent or silent during this critical time,” Aung Din, the policy director of the group said recently. “It is time for secretary general Ban Ki-moon to personally intervene and the Security Council to formulate a collective response.”

Reporting by DVB

U.N. envoy to Myanmar amid protests

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- United Nations diplomats called on the U.N. special envoy to Myanmar to meet with the country's military junta after Ibrahim Gambari briefed them Thursday on the political situation in the secretive Asian nation.

Buddhist monks march down a street in Yangon, Myanmar, Thursday.

A small but persistent protest movement against the regime began in August after the government hiked fuel prices. Authorities have arrested several hundred protesters, but demonstrations led by Buddhist monks have gone largely unchallenged by the military. Marching in the streets of Yangon since Tuesday, the monks have been joined by thousands of supporters.

"We are concerned about the situation, particularly now, because we see a worsening of the political situation, and that is affecting the well-being of the people of Burma," said U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad, referring to Myanmar as its previous name before the military took power in 1962.

"We have urged Mr. Gambari, and he plans to visit Burma as soon as possible," Khalilzad said.

Earlier this month, Gambari called the arrests of protesters a "setback for Myanmar." The junta typically keeps a tight lid on public dissent.

Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her work in restoring democracy in Myanmar. Her politics have led to her being held in varying degrees of detention by the military from 1989 to 1995, 2000 to 2002, and May 2003 to the present.

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won general elections in 1990, but the military refused to honor the results.

"The continued clampdown on any dissent in Burma, the continued human-rights abuses, have seriously set this back," said British ambassador John Sawers. "And it has set things back not only in Burma itself, but in the region as a whole."