Buddhist monk rally steps up pressure on Burma's junta

[struggle4progress]

Source: The Guardian

Jonathan Watts in Beijing
Thursday September 20, 2007
The Guardian

More than 2,000 Buddhist monks took to the streets of Burma again yesterday in the most sustained and widespread protest against the military junta for more than 10 years. The authorities made a rare admission that security forces had fired tear gas and warning shots to quell the unrest, which has spread across several cities over the past month ...

Yesterday in Yangon about 500 monks forced their way through closed gates and occupied the Sule pagoda, after marching through the capital in disciplined ranks. According to foreign news reports, they were encouraged by crowds of civilians who clapped, cheered and chanted slogans of support.

Demonstrations are rare in Burma, where the ruling generals have used repressive measures to maintain power without elections since a military coup in 1988. The last big protest rallies ended that year when soldiers killed an estimated 3,000 civilians, many of them monks and students.

In Sittwe, 350 miles west of the capital, reporters say that this week between 700 and 1,000 monks staged a sit-in at a police station to demand the release of two men sentenced to two years' jail for giving water to the monks last month during a rally against soaring fuel prices. Officials reportedly agreed to release the pair within three days ...

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/burma/story/0,,2172937,00.html

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Monks Demonstrate for 2nd Day in Myanmar

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 20, 2007

... Tuesday was the 19th anniversary of the 1988 crackdown in which the military seized power after violently crushing vast pro-democracy demonstrations.

The regime held a general election in 1990, but refused to honor the results when the pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy Party won. Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for more than 11 of the past 18 years.

Some monks have started a religious boycott, holding their black begging bowls upside down as they march in a symbolic demonstration that they will refuse alms from the authorities and their supporters. Ostracizing the regime carries strong significance for the country’s mostly Buddhist population.

In the Myanmar language, the word for “boycott” comes from the words for holding the bowl upside down ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/world/asia/20myanmar.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[David in Canada]

1. There is an opening for change...

The leader of the 'State Peace and Development Council', the ruling junta, Than Shwe is believed to be suffering from terminal intestinal cancer. Also, his number two, the Prime Minister Soe Win, has been in a Singapore hospital for months for extensive chemotherapy for leukaemia.