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Burma six months on - lone protests and worsening conditions

Joanna writes: A moving account of a lone protester in Burma who set himself alight this week serves to remind us of the uprisings by monks in the country six months ago.

"It was Friday evening and thousands of people were praying at the Shwedagon Pagoda, the golden monument that towers above Rangoon. Before the plain-clothes police could react, the young man whipped out a placard denouncing the junta and placed it round his nect. Then he produced a bottle of petrol, shook it over his clothes and set himself alight"

A symbol of the vestiges of the Saffron Revolution, he is now in hospital with 70 per cent burns.

Reports suggest that conditions are even worse in the country than they were in September 2007 when high fuel and food prices and political oppression caused monks to take to the streets in protest.

With a referendum on the new Burmese constitution coming up in May there are some underground movements beginning to bubble up, despite expectations that the government will manipulate the results to ensure a 'yes' vote.

"Anti-junta manifestos and 'vote-no' posters are circulated by e-mail and occasionally put up in university campuses, before being torn down hastily by the authorities. Activists distribute T-shirts bearing 'No!' in huge letters, with the word 'smoking' tucked unobtrusively at the bottom - disguising a political slogan as a public health message."

Burmese monks on the march again

More than 100 Burmese monks are back on the march in a brave move that indicates the wave of protest which swept the country last month has not been quelled completely.

The march began in Pakokku, a hub of Buddhist learning with over 80 monastries, 400 km north of Rangoon. The protest and prayers lasted an hour before the monks returned to their monasteries.

One monk talking to the Norway based radio station, Democratic Voice of Burma, run by dissident Burmese journlists said courageously: "Our demands are for lower commodity prices, national reconciliation and immediate release of (pro-democracy leader) Aung San Suu Kyi and all the political prisoners."
He said they had little time to organise the march so it was small, but "there will be more organised and bigger protests soon".

Joanna Sugden

Monk escaped from Burma

From International Herald Tribune via Thailand: Insights into the way the protests were organized by monks in Burma from one who escaped to find asylum in Thailand.  Ashin Kovida, aged 24, got out by dying his hair blond and wearing a crucifix.  He paints a picture of a group of 15 monks in their 20s who were at the core of it, inspired by the uprisings against MIlosevic in Yugoslavia.  More detail still in the Washington Post.

Burma one month on

In what could be called a horrible inevitability the ruling generals in Burma have laid the official blame for last month's pro-democracy protests at the feet of the country's monks

And Turkmenistan news report that the first Buddhist monk has been sentenced for his part in the protests.

A good piece from Slate magazine this week on Burma after the crackdown voices the hope that change will now come from within the military.

"I'm counting on the military to get rid of [Than Shwe]," said the professor. "Even colonialists never shot a monk," he said, referring to Britain's harsh colonial occupation of Burma that lasted until the late 1940s. "They don't say it, but [the military is] deeply unhappy," U Thaung said.

Prayers for Burma, memories of older revolutions

As the situation in Burma darkens,  calls go out worldwide for prayers, by all denominations.  Including the Catholic Bishops there.  Buddhism rejects violence and retaliation,  but states that there is a limit to the human suffering and injustice which can be tolerated.  The influence of monks is great in Burma, among all generations, hence the power of these demonstrations. 
   During these tense days this blog will reflect on the relationship between religious belief and political uprising: it is crass for believers to be triumphalist about this, as many humanists have fought immensely brave fights against tyranny. Yet there is something particularly striking about past battles spearheaded by religious people:  few revolutions have been entirely religious, but as an ingredient, religion is powerful:  not least perhaps because it brings a headlong willingness to risk life and freedom for something perceived as higher than the individual.  Remember, for example, the picture of Lech Walesa and the Solidarity strikers of Gdansk, praying and hearing Mass at the shipyard gates? 

Or earlier, the effect of Puritanism on the American revolution; this fascinating essay tracks it and quotes John W Thornton in The Pulpit of American Revolution:  whose Fathers did not divorce politics and religion:   like the Burmese monks and nuns and believers today  - 
     "They prepared for the struggle and went into battle, not as soldiers of fortune, but with the Word of God in their hearts, and trusting in him. This was the secret of that moral energy which sustained the Republic in its material weakness against superior numbers, and discipline, and all the power of England."

Burma:Buddhism and Democracy

Heroically, given that in the last uprising the military junta killed 3000 protesters, the monks and nuns of Burma continue to march for freedom. So far, the Junta has not acted against them, and Aung San Suu Kyi has been able to greet them.  The Dalai Lama has offered his support today (as he did to the revolutions against Communism)       It is an opportunity to consider the relationship between Buddhism and democracy.  A Buddhist may  embrace other modes of government  - as this useful site explains - because the religion asks only "  the maximisation of happiness, the minimisation of suffering, the provision for the least advantaged and the cultivation of traits of character such as compassion, patience, generosity and wisdom. If a monarchy can do this, fine. If a democracy can accomplish that, fine, too." For details on the religion's history in Burma, this is helpful.  (contd)

Burma prays: Aung San Suu Kyi greets protesting monks

As protests continue in Burma, led by some ten thousand  Buddhist monks,  Aung San Suu Kyi has come out to pray with them.   The leaders of the demonstrations have vowed to continue until the collapse of the military government. They call on the Burmese people  to pray in their doorways for 15 minutes at 2000 on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.  It is the sixth day of protests, and in an unprecedented move of conciliation, government forces allowed some 500 monks to march past Suu Kyi's  house, where she has been detained since 2003.