Myanmar anti-government protest marches
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[edit] Myanmar anti-government protest march
- As many as 100,000 anti-government protesters led by a phalanx of Buddhist monks marched on 24 September 2007 through Yangon, the largest crowd to demonstrate in Myanmar's biggest city since a 1988 pro-democracy uprising that was brutally crushed by the military.
- Marching for more than five hours and over at least 20 kilometers, a last hard-core group of more than 1,000 monks and 400 sympathizers finished by walking up to an intersection where police blocked access to the street where democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is under house arrest.
- Making no effort to push past, the marchers chanted a Buddhist prayer with the words "May there be peace," and then dispersed. About 500 onlookers cheered their act of defiance, as 100 riot police with helmets and shield stared stonily ahead.
- Some participants claimed there were several hundred thousand marchers in their ranks, but an international aid agency official with employees monitoring the crowd estimated the size was well over 50,000 and approaching 100,000. From the front of the march, witnesses could see a one-mile stretch of eight-lane road filled with people.
- The current protests began on 19 August 2007 as a movement against economic hardship, after the government sharply raised fuel prices. But they have their basis in long-standing dissatisfaction with the repressive military government.
- After a week of marching by the monks, the protests have become explicitly political, though the clerics prefer to make their point indirectly through chants and prayers at key locations.
- Members of the public who have joined them have taken up chanting the slogans of the pro-democracy movement: national reconciliation - meaning dialogue between the government and opposition parties - freedom for political prisoners, and pleas for adequate food, shelter and clothing.
- The monks' protest raised the political ante Saturday, 22 September 2007, when a crowd of more than 500 people was allowed to pass by Suu Kyi's house, where she greeted them in her first public appearance in more than four years. But police later blocked further attempts to approach her home.
- Monday's march 24 September 2007), launched from the Shwedagon pagoda, the country's most sacred shrine, gathered participants as it wended its way through Yangon's streets. Some 20,000 monks took the lead, with onlookers joining in on what had been billed as a day of general protest. Students were seen joining the march, which passed by the old campus of Rangoon University, a hotbed of protest in past times.
- Saying prayers for peace, they also passed the offices of the Defence Ministry and the residence of Senior Gen. Than Shwe, head of the ruling junta.
- Security forces were not in evidence for most of the march route, aside from the police and their vehicles near Suu Kyi's house.
- In the central city of Mandalay, about 1,000 monks marched, also undisturbed by the authorities.
- The monks, who took over a faltering movement from political activists, already over the past few days had managed to bring people into the streets in numbers not seen since the 1988 pro-democracy uprising snuffed out by the army at a cost of thousands of lives.
- Diplomats and analysts said Myanmar's military rulers were showing unexpected restraint this time because of pressure from the country's key trading partner and diplomatic ally, China.
- A South-east Asian diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity as a matter of protocol, said the regime is under pressure from China to avoid a crackdown just as its larger neighbour has pressured it to speed up other democratic changes.
- China, which is counting on Myanmar's vast oil and gas reserves to help fuel its booming economy, earlier this year blocked a U.N. Security Council criticizing Myanmar's rights record saying it was not the right forum.
- But at the same time, it has employed quiet diplomacy and subtle public pressure on the regime, urging it to move toward inclusive democracy and speed up the process of dialogue and reform.
- Josef Silverstein, a political scientist and author of several books on Myanmar, said it would not be in China's interest to have civil unrest in Myanmar, also known as Burma.
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