Yangon, Sep 25 (DPA) A military ban on the monk-led protests that have rocked Myanmar’s former capital Yangon for a week persuaded thousands of Buddhist clergy to remain in their temples Tuesday but did not stop a hardcore group from marching to the Shwedagon Pagoda.
About 100 monks arrived at the famed pagoda about noon in open defiance of a government order Monday night to abide by Buddhist “rules and regulations”.
The order, which was repeated by state media Tuesday morning, has signalled that Myanmar’s junta is ready to crack down on the monks’ barefoot rebellion, which climaxed Monday with up to 100,000 marchers in Yangon and other cities.
On Monday night, Brigadier-General Thura Myint Maung, the minister of religion, issued a televised warning to all monks to obey Buddhist rules that prohibit the clergy from engaging in political activities.
Tuesday’s New Light of Myanmar newspaper, a government mouthpiece, played down Monday’s huge demonstrations, saying the protesting monks represented only a small minority.
“Although the crowds of monks seemed big as they gathered together in a single place, the number of monks on the street was not as much as two percent of the total,” claimed the paper. “Over 98 percent of monks want to perform their religious duties peacefully. Indeed, the instigators are organising the young monks to express whatever they wish through the foreign media.”
Myanmar’s military-controlled Buddhist clergy organisation, the Sangha Nayaka Committee, met abbots of Yangon’s Buddhist temples Tuesday and instructed them to prevent all monks from marching and to send visiting student monks back to their provinces.
“They told us to prevent a repeat of 1988,” said an abbot of a temple in Yangon’s Yankin township.
In 1988, Myanmar was rocked by nationwide demonstrations 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 recent protests.
Without warning or consultations, the government more than doubled fuel prices on Aug 15, exacerbating the plight of the impoverished Myanmar people overnight. The country has been suffering from double-digit inflation since 2006.
“What right do the military have to tell us not to protest?” said the Yankin temple abbot. “The monks belong to the laymen, so if the Myanmar people are poor, the monks are poor, too.”
Anti-inflation protests first started in Yangon on Aug 19, led by former student activists and opposition politicians. Earlier this month, the movement was taken up by the monkhood.
Myanmar’s 400,000-strong monkhood 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, which ended in bloodshed.
Observers have been amazed that Myanmar’s military rulers have waited so long to suppress the monks’ rebellion and attribute it to the influence of China on the pariah state.
“I can see no other explanation for their restraint,” one European diplomat said. “They’ve shot monks in the past.”
China is one of the few countries allied with Myanmar’s military junta, having used its veto to prevent the United Nations Security Council from further pressuring the regime last year.