Yangon, Sep 25 (DPA) Tens of thousands of monks Tuesday defied a military ban and warnings of reprisals and marched through the streets of Myanmar’s former capital, continuing their barefoot protest that has rocked Yangon for more than a week.
The monks marched from Shwedagon Pagoda to Sule Pagoda, where they flooded the traffic circle around the downtown temple, and then proceeded to other streets before dispersing back to their respective monasteries after 4 p.m. local time.
There was no military crackdown, despite the warnings.
Tuesday’s demonstration, exceeding 50,000 monks and laymen, was in open defiance of a government order to end their daily marches that started a week ago, and escalated Monday with up to 100,000 marchers in Yangon and other cities.
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.
Trucks with loudspeakers prowled Yangon’s downtown area Tuesday warning that anyone caught watching the marchers will be liable to three years in jail and anyone who participates in the marches faces 10 years’ imprisonment.
Some monks have tried to depoliticise their protest, carrying placards that read, “Loving Kindness Wins All,” and “Untruth will be overcome by Truth,” but many laymen joining the rally were less discreet.
“The people’s desire must be fulfilled,” was a common cry. On Tuesday, for the first time, some protesters unfurled the Fighting Peacock flag, a symbol associated with the 1988 uprising. Others carried pictures of Aung San, Myanmar’s independence hero and the father of Aung San Suu Kyi, the nation’s democracy heroine.
Suu Kyi has been under house arrest since May 2003.
A confrontation seems inevitable, foreign observers said.
Representatives of the government-controlled Buddhist clergy organization, the Sangha Nayaka Committee, met abbots of Yangon Buddhist temples Tuesday and instructed them to prevent all monks from marching and to send visiting student monks back to the 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 started building in Yangon on August 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 in Myanmar, having played a pivotal role in the independence struggle against Great 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.