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| Southeast Asia |
| Myanmar junta and monks heading towards confrontation |
| 2007-09-26 |
| Chanting “democracy, democracy”, 10,000 monks marched through the heart of Myanmar’s main city on Tuesday in defiance of a threat by the ruling generals to send in troops to end the biggest anti-junta protests in nearly 20 years. The streets were lined with people clapping and cheering and there were no overt signs of police or soldiers and no trouble as the campaign against 45 years of military rule swelled in size and scope. But after the demonstrators left the area around the Sule Pagoda in central Yangon, the focus of a week of marches by the revered maroon-robed monks, riot police and troops moved in. Eight trucks arrived with police carrying shields, batons and rifles, a Reuters witness said. Eleven army trucks packed with soldiers also drove in, suggesting the junta was filling up the city centre to counter any attempt at a repeat. In another possible sign of looming confrontation, a well-placed source said detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi was moved to the notorious Insein prison on Sunday, a day after she appeared in front of her house to greet monks. If true, removing Suu Kyi from her lakeside villa would deprive the protesters of a focus after they were stunned by police allowing them through the barricades sealing off her street on Saturday. They have not been allowed through since despite several attempts and scores of riot police took up positions behind razor-wire barricades at the entrance to the street. Reminder of ‘88: The area around the Sule pagoda was the scene of the worst bloodshed during a crackdown on nationwide pro-democracy protests in 1988 in which 3,000 people are thought to have been killed. In an ominous reminder of that, vehicles bearing loudspeakers toured the city in the morning blaring out threats of action under a law allowing troops to break up illegal protests. “People are not to follow, encourage or take part in these marches. Action will be taken against those who violate this order,” the broadcasts said. People arrived in huge numbers anyway a day after up to 100,000 people protested in Yangon and in Taunggok, a coastal city 250 miles to the northwest, about 40,000 monks and civilians took to the streets, witnesses said. “The people are not afraid,” one man said as the Yangon column of monks stretched several blocks on their march from the Shwedagon Pagoda, the Southeast Asian nation’s holiest shrine and symbolic heart of the campaign. In a gesture of defiance, some waved the bright red “fighting peacock” flag, emblem of the student unions that spearheaded a the 1988 uprising, one the darkest episodes in the former Burma’s modern history. International pleas: The international community has pleaded with the generals to avoid another bloodbath, but the chilling message behind the legal language of Tuesday’s warnings was lost on nobody in the city of 5 million people. Far away in their new jungle capital, the generals hunkered down for an emergency “War Office” meeting, a diplomat said, and ethnic Karen rebels on the Thai border told Reuters troops had been redeployed to Yangon. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Now if these were Shaolin monks... |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2007-09-26 10:06 |