By DPA
Yangon : Hundreds of riot police and soldiers Wednesday blocked Buddhist monks from entering Yangon’s holiest pagoda, the Shwedagon, in a crackdown on a weeklong barefoot rebellion in Myanmar’s former capital.
Police and soldiers manned barricades erected on the road to the east gate of the Shwedagon Pagoda, preventing marching monks from using the shrine as a launch pad for their ninth day of peaceful protests.
Similar shows of military might were visible elsewhere in the city.
At least 12 truckloads, each carrying about 40 police and soldiers, were dispatched Tuesday night to City Hall after tens of thousands of monks defied a government order to end their protest marches and return to their temples.
Dozens of military trucks and jeeps were seen parked outside the City Hall compound, but the troops were out of sight Wednesday morning. Police and military personnel were guarding the four gates of the Sule Pagoda, which sits in the centre of a traffic circle in front of City Hall.
The pagoda in the centre of downtown Yangon has been where the monks have congregated, joined by thousands of laymen, over the past four days in a show of defiance against Myanmar’s military junta.
The marching monks appeared determined to take to the streets again Wednesday despite signs that a confrontation is looming. As on past days, they were to first meet about noon at the Shwedagon Pagoda and then march on Sule Pagoda.
“Most monks will march,” one Yangon temple abbot told DPA. “We are even ready to die.”
Small groups of monks were seen heading for the Shwedagon, some carrying alms bowls and some without.
Yangon’s barefoot rebellion, which started Sep 18, drew up to 100,000 followers Monday and Tuesday and has proceeded so far without reprisals from the regime.
But signs indicated that the junta is ready to spill blood as it did in September 1988 when the army unleashed its fury on pro-democracy mass demonstrations, killing up to 3,000 people, including hundreds of protesting monks.
Around midnight, the government announced via public loudspeakers that a 60-day curfew had been imposed in the city from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.
Yangon General Hospital has been instructed to clear wards in preparation for an influx of patients, hospital sources said.
In 1988, Myanmar was rocked by nationwide rallies against the military regime’s incompetent rule, which had dragged the country down from one of the wealthiest in Asia prior to World War II to an economic basket case by 1987.
Economic hardships are partly behind the latest protests.
Without warning or consultations, the government more than doubled fuel prices on Aug 15, exacerbating overnight the plight of Myanmar’s impoverished people. The country has suffered double-digit inflation since 2006.
Anti-inflation protests started building on Aug 19 in Yangon, led by former student activists and opposition politicians. Last week, the monks took up the movement.
Myanmar’s 400,000-member Buddhist monk hood has a long history of political activism, having played a pivotal role in the independence struggle against Britain in 1947 and the anti-military demonstrations of 1988.
Observers have been amazed that Myanmar’s military rulers have waited so long to suppress the monks’ rebellion and attributed it to China’s influence on the pariah state.
“I can see no other explanation for their restraint,” one European diplomat said. “They’ve shot monks in the past.”