Burmese Monks March Again Ahead of Visit by UN Envoy

[WhiteTara]

Source: NYTimes

BANGKOK, Thursday, Nov. 1 — A small group of Buddhist monks held a protest march in Myanmar on Wednesday in the first significant public show of defiance since troops crushed a pro-democracy uprising a month ago.

Reports from inside the country said 100 to 200 monks had defied a ban on assembly and marched through the streets of Pakokku, a medium-sized city in central Myanmar that was the site of a clash between monks and soldiers in September that set off the mass protests in larger cities.

Aung Din, a Burmese dissident living in Washington, predicted more challenges to the government with the approaching return of the United Nations special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari. Mr. Gambari, who had visited shortly after the crackdown, will meet with a “a broad range of representatives of Myanmar society” from Saturday through next Thursday, the United Nations said.
snip
The monks in Pakokku on Wednesday reportedly demanded lower fuel prices and the release of political prisoners.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/world/asia/01myanmar.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

---

Blessings and protection for the truly brave of this world

[pinto]

1. You gotta respect this show of opposition to a brutal dictatorship.

I loved the pix shown 'round the world of the throng of monks marching in peaceful protest, many with their alms bowls held upside down as a graphic statement of 'No' in their own terms. Brave ones all.

[bhikkhu]

2. the spin on this is relentless...

guided by years of political posturing, endlessly repeated by the media, questioned by few.

Burma has been under international sanctions for years now, on the commonly applied theory that making a population miserably poor serves two ends - first, we can point to the miserably poverty as an example of bad government. Second, on occasion miserable poverty leads to popular uprising.

It is worth noting that the protests were the result of a further descent into poverty initiated by the decrease in fuel subsidies. It would be more accurate to describe these as anti-hunger demonstrations than anti-government demonstrations, but expectations are very low....

We have engineered these types of things repeatedly all over the world, and the propaganda has never yet failed: however much chaos and death result, we comfort ourselves at our own fine system, and wonder at the heartless governments of foreign powers.