Posted on 09/25/2007 12:08:23 AM PDT by Jedi Master Pikachu
Lorries with loudspeakers have been driving through Burma's main city of Rangoon warning residents to stop anti-government protests. The broadcasts threatened that "action will be taken against those who violate this order". But hundreds of monks and civilians defied the threats and began fresh protests at the Shwedagon pagoda. On Monday, there were protests in at least 25 towns, with tens of thousands of people marching in Rangoon.
Several military trucks are now parked near Shwedagon pagoda, which has been the focus of the protests. Eyewitnesses said several hundred monks gathered at Shwedagon with the apparent intention of marching again. The BBC's Jonathan Head in Bangkok says monks - who have been spearheading the protest campaign - have been handing out pictures of Burmese independence hero Aung San, the deceased father of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. They are also carrying flags, including some bearing the image of a fighting peacock used by students during the 1988 pro-democracy uprising, witnesses told Reuters news agency.
The junta, which violently repressed the 1988 protests killing some 3,000 people, finally broke its silence over the mounting protests, saying late on Monday that it was ready to "take action" against the monks. It repeated its warning in state media on Tuesday, ordering monks not to get involved in politics and accusing them of allowing themselves to be manipulated by the foreign media. US President George W Bush is to announce further sanctions against Burma's ruling military junta in response to the protests, the White House has said. Mr Bush is expected to announce the new restrictions during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Washington is hoping it will encourage other nations to act and embolden the protesters on Burma's streets, says the BBC's Jonathan Beale in Washington. The authorities are likely to be under huge pressure from their close neighbour China to avoid bloodshed and instability, the BBC's Asia correspondent, Andrew Harding notes. The European Union has also urged the junta to show the "utmost restraint" in dealing with the protests and to take the opportunity to "launch a process of real political reform". The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, has given his backing to the monks' call for freedom and democracy.
Detained leader A group of more than 1,000 of the maroon-robed monks and 400 sympathisers went to Aung San Suu Kyi's street at the end of Monday's march, the Associated Press reported. They chanted a prayer for peace in the face of the riot police blocking access to her home, where she is under house arrest, before dispersing peacefully. The organisation that has emerged to lead the protests, the Alliance of All Burmese Buddhist Monks, has vowed to continue marches until it has "wiped the military dictatorship from the land". The protests were triggered by the government's decision to double the price of fuel last month, hitting people hard in the impoverished nation. [Bonus picture] |
Prayers for the brave monks and their supporters.
"They call Aung San Suu Kyi "The Lady". Ordinary Burmese regard her with a reverence that the regime has never been able to reduce, despite regularly denouncing her although rarely by name as a tool of foreign powers. Instead, seeing a foreigner on the streets of Rangoon, people will discreetly approach, whisper "I like The Lady", and move on before they are seen holding a conversation. Miss Suu Kyi, 62, is the daughter of Aung San, Burma's assassinated independence hero, and grew up in Burma and India. She spent many years living as a housewife in Oxford, where Michael Aris, her husband, was a university don, until returning to Burma in 1988, where she co- founded the National League for Democracy. Two years later it won elections by a landslide, but has never been allowed to take power. She is the world's only detained Nobel peace prize laureate, having spent 12 of the last 17 years in various forms of custody, but has always insisted on non-violence as the way to "freedom from fear", the title of one of her books. "It is not power that corrupts but fear," she said. "Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those subject to it."
One of the greatest assets the Burmese people have going for them is this lady. She is a visable, personified icon of freedom that people will identify with. She doesn't even have to really do anything but exist at this point, but everyone knows who she is, and where she is, and the army can't do anything about it.
ping
I love daw Aung San Suu Kyi
Is this the Myanmar the Pres mentioned today at the UN?
Thanks for the ping, pandy.
Great wisdom in that. As the dharma teaches; abandon hope and fear.
nope, but the movie ‘Beyond Rangoon’ is pretty good
Read her books !
That’s the movie. I guess it was more about the American doctor than Aung San Suu Kyi.
But then people seem more interested in fantasy than reality
The military are moving in now, they have started the shooting (over their heads to disperse, not directly into the crowds, just YET), international reports are that (some) monks are being hit with sticks and poles--injury and arrest reports are coming in. There is some rifle firing. Military junta declared the monks and others marches as illegal, and also ordered an evening curfew.
It should be sunset in Burma in just a few hours. It is 6 a.m. Wednesday Eastern Time.
They may pull a Tiananmen after all, after dark.
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