Thousands Join Monks in Protests

Thousands Join Monks in Protests

By SETH MYDANS
The New York Times
September 25, 2007

Agence France-Presse — Getty Images: Buddhist monks, escorted on each side by hand-holding supporters, protesting Sunday in the wet streets of Yangon, Myanmar.
BANGKOK, Sept. 24 — As protesters filled the streets of Myanmar’s cities in greater numbers than ever today, swelling the crowds in the country’s largest city to an estimated 100,000, the government issued its first warning that it might take action against protesting Buddhist monks.

Buddhist leaders spoke against Myanmar’s military rulers Sunday in Yangon, the largest city. About 10,000 monks attended.
The minister of religious affairs for the military junta told religious leaders that if they did not move to restrain the monks who are at the heart of the protests, the government would take unspecified action against them.

The warning came as protesters pushed their month-old confrontation with the military government toward an unpredictable and possibly dangerous outcome.

In the main city, Yangon, the Buddhist monks who have led the protests for the past week were outnumbered by civilians, including prominent political dissidents and well-known cultural figures.

A crowd estimated by the Associated Press as high as 100,000 set out in the morning from the gold-spired Shwedagon Pagoda and marched unopposed in separate columns through the city.

Other protests were reported in Mandalay, Sittwe and Bago. Monks and their supporters have marched in other cities as well in recent days.

Until now, the government has remained silent and mostly out of out of sight, giving over the streets to the protesters with virtually no uniformed security presence in evidence.

For all the energy and jubilation of the crowds, the country formerly known as Burma seemed to be holding its breath. As the demonstrations expanded from political dissidents a month ago to Buddhist monks last week to the broad public, the government’s options seemed to be narrowing.

The demonstrations proceeded under the shadow of the last major nationwide convulsion, in 1988, when even larger pro-democracy protests were crushed by the military at the cost of some 3,000 lives.

“We are in uncharted territory,” said the British ambassador to Myanmar, Mark Canning, speaking by telephone from Yangon after observing the crowds today.

These demonstrations seem to be steadily picking up momentum,” he said.

“They are widely spread geographically. They are quite well organized, they are stimulated by genuine economic hardship and they are being done in a peaceful but very effective fashion.”

The government may have been hoping that the demonstrations would simply run out of steam. But their rapid growth and the pent-up grievances that are driving them make that seem unlikely. With each day, the growing size of the crowd seems to attract even more participants.

Another possibility is the opening of some form of compromise or dialogue between the government and its opponents. But that is an option the country’s military rulers have never embraced.

Instead, they have jailed their political opponents, held the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest and rejected the demands of the country’s marginalized ethnic minorities.

And when the challenges against them have seemed threatening, they have used force, as in 1988 or in 2003, when the government unleashed a band of thugs to attack Aung San Suu Kyi when her popularity seemed to be getting out of hand.

Along with the heady energy of mass demonstrations, Myanmar was alive with rumors of an impending military crackdown. Exile groups with contacts inside the country have been reporting troop movements and warnings to hospitals to prepare for large numbers of casualties.

But analysts said a number of factors that were not present in 1988 might be constraining the government today.

The first is that the world is watching. Since 1988, Myanmar has become the focus of international condemnation for its abuses of human and political rights and its treatment of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been held under house arrest for 12 of the past 18 years.

The country has become an embarrassment to its nine partners in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a regional political and economic organization, some of whose meetings have been boycotted by the United States because of the inclusion of Myanmar. Using economic and political leverage, that association has been increasingly open in calling for reform in Myanmar.

The most significant constraint on Myanmar’s behavior may be its giant neighbor China, which has supported it with aid and commercial ties, undermining economic sanctions imposed by Western nations.

“China wants stability here, and the way things are going is not really consistent with that,” said a Western diplomat reached by telephone in Myanmar.

Chinese businesses have invested heavily in Myanmar, which is also a major source of raw materials — particulary oil and gas — and a potential link to seaports on the Andaman Sea.

China has said repeatedly that Myanmar’s troubles are its own internal affair and last year it blocked an American move to place Myanmar’s violations of human rights on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council. But it has recently taken small public steps to press for democratic reform in Myanmar.

In June it arranged a highly unusual meeting in Beijing between representatives of Myanmar and the United States at which the Americans pressed for the release of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi.

Earlier this month, as the demonstrations continued in Myanmar, a senior Chinese diplomat, Tang Jiaxuan, told the visiting Myanmar foreign minister, Nyan Win, that “China wholeheartedly hopes that Myanmar will push forward a democracy procss that is appropriate for the country.”

But with its population rising up against it in the strongest challenge of the past two decades, some analysts said, it might be too late to urge the generals to be calm.

“At this point I think all bets are off and the Chinese will have no real influence on what they do,” said Dave Mathieson, an expert on Myanmar with the international rights group Human Rights Watch.

The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/world/asia/25myanmar.html?hp
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Myanmar
From THE NEW YORK TIMES ALMANAC 2004

GEOGRAPHY
Location: NW region of Southeast Asia.
Boundaries: China and Laos to NE, Bangladesh, India to NW, Thailand to SE, Andaman Sea to S, and Bay of Bengal to SW.
Total area: 261,969 sq. mi. (678,500 sq km).
Coastline: 1,200 mi. (1,930 km).
Comparative area: slightly smaller than Texas.
Land use: 15% arable land; 1% permanent crops; 84% other.
Major cities: (1983 census) Yangon (formerly Rangoon) (capital) 2,458,712; Mandalay 532,895; Bassein 335,000; Moulmein 219,991; Akyab 143,000.

PEOPLE
Population: 42,510,539 (2003 est.).
Nationality: noun—Burmese (sing., pl.); adjective—Burmese.
Ethnic groups: 68% Burman, 9% Shan, 7% Karen, 4% Rakhine, 3% Chinese, 2% Mon, 2% Indian, 5% other.
Languages: Burmese, minority ethnic languages.
Religions: 89% Buddhist, 4% Muslim, 4% Christian, 1% animist beliefs.

GOVERNMENT
Type: military regime.
Independence: Jan. 4, 1948 (from U.K.).
Constitution: Jan. 3, 1974; new constitution being drafted.
National holiday: Independence Day, Jan. 4.
Head of Government: Gen. Than Shwe, chairman State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) (since Apr. 1992).
Structure: executive—military junta controls legislature—last election held in 1990, but never convened; judiciary—not independent, no guarantees.

ECONOMY
Monetary unit: kyat.
Budget: (FY96/97)
income: $7.9 bil.;
expend.: $12.2 bil.
GDP: $70 bil., $1,660 per capita (2002 est.).
Chief crops: paddy rice, corn, oilseeds; hardwood.
Natural resources: crude oil, timber, tin, copper, tungsten.
Major industries: agricultural processing, textiles and footwear, wood and wood products.
Labor force: 23.7 mil. (1999 est.); 70% agriculture, 7% industry, 23% services (2001 est.);
Exports: $2.7 bil. (f.o.b., 2002); teak, rice, pulses, beans.
Imports: $2.5 bil. (f.o.b., 2002); machinery, transport equipment, chemicals, food products.
Major trading partners: exports: Thailand, U.S., India;
imports: Singapore, Thailand, China.
(Until the summer of 1989 this country was known as Burma.)

Burma, an independent Buddhist monarchy from the 11th century, fell to the Mongol empire in the 13th century, and after the 14th century was a satellite state of China. Anglo-French rivalry over trade left Burma under French influence in the early 19th century, but in a series of three wars (1824–26, 1852, 1885), Great Britain succeeded in bringing all of Burma into the British raj of India. The country became self-governing under a British protectorate in 1937.

Japanese occupation of Burma in early 1942 made the country a major theater of fighting during World War II. The Burma Road, built by the Allies to connect northeastern India with southwestern China, was a key link in bringing supplies to the Chinese Nationalist army during the war.

Burma achieved independence as the Union of Burma on Jan. 4, 1948. Promises of autonomy for ethnic minority regions such as the Shan and Karen States have not been fulfilled, leading to armed separatist movements in those areas ever since. In 1962 a coup led by Gen. Ne Win overthrew the democratic government and established a one-party state under the Burmese Socialist Program party. The party's “Burmese Path to Socialism” resulted in self-imposed international isolation and economic stagnation at home despite the country's potential wealth in agriculture, timber, minerals, and gems.

In July 1988 Ne Win resigned from office in the face of mounting popular demonstrations. A series of short-lived successor governments were unable to restore public order and normal governmental functions; direct military rule was announced in September 1988 as demonstrations continued.

In the general election held on May 27, 1990 (the first multiparty free elections in three decades), the opposition National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won a decisive victory, but the results of the election were nullified by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), and leaders of the elected government were placed under house arrest. In 1991 the continued political repression in Myanmar was brought to international attention when Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This helped usher in a period of diminishing repression. A new leader of the ruling military junta, Gen. Than Shwe, began peace talks with the Karen rebels in early 1994, and released Aung San Suu Kyi in July 1995. In 1998, renewed pressure by NLD upon the junta (since Nov. 1997 renamed the State Peace and Development Council) to convene the 1990 parliament brought renewed repression and mass arrests; a committee of NLD delcared itself to be the legal parliament of Myanmar in September, asserting that all the junta legislation since 1990 was null and void. After releasing Aung from her 14-month arrest in May 2002, the junta “detained” Aung and 19 other NLD members in May 2003. In Sept. 2002 three grandsons of Ne Win and a son-in-law were sentenced to death for treason (an alleged coup attempt); Ne Win himself died suddenly shortly after.

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