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Wednesday, September 26, 2007

The Buddhist Monks Rebellion

by Nanette

I’ve been posting bits about the situation in Burma on the Community/Member blog, but I really knew little about the overall situation, although I have, of course, heard of Aung San Suu Kyi and her house arrest and such. It wasn’t until I read this piece in the Guardian UK, though, that I realized that the monks and others who are protesting are in very much more dire danger than I first supposed.

I naively, I guess, thought that the military would be leery of killing the monks, or mass killings of civilians, when they know the world is watching. It seems not.

Yesterday, what everyone feared would happen in Burma, started happening. Police sent in to disperse thousands of demonstrators in the administrative capital Rangoon opened fire on the protesters. Reuters quoted hospital and monastery sources as saying two monks and a civilian died of gunshot wounds, as thousands of Buddhist monks and civilians defied warning shots, tear gas and baton charges. If the pattern of 1988 is to be repeated, these deaths could prove a grim foretaste of things to come. Then, it took weeks of similar nationwide protests before the insurrection was quelled by the massacre of 3,000 people.

I wasn’t aware of whatever happened in 1988, so I looked it up, finding this at Burma Watch (the number of people reported killed differ, but official counts and on the ground counts often do):

Finally in 1988, Burma erupted into a series of demonstrations and strikes protesting the existing extreme political oppression and economic hardships. The government initially responded with arrests, detentions, and excessive force resulting in some deaths.

The demonstrations of 1988 culminated in a massive nation-wide show of People Power on August 8 in which hundreds of thousands of people marched to demand a change in government. These peaceful demonstrations were violently crushed by army troops who fired relentlessly on the unarmed crowds in Rangoon and other cities killing more than 10,000 student, civilian and Buddhist monk protesters throughout the country. Thousands were arrested.

The Burma Watch link also gives much more background on the struggles of the country since gaining independence from the British colonialist rule.

Here is more from The Guardian, though, on the current situation and some of the ins and outs of Burma/Myanmar’s relations with leading nations:

Once again, most of the world looks on at the actions of a brutish military dictatorship who show no compunction about spilling blood. But not all the bystanders are impotent. China is the junta’s chief backer. Beijing has supplied the Burmese military with fighter aircraft, tanks, naval patrol boats, armoured personnel carriers, field artillery pieces ,small arms and ammunition - more than $2bn worth.

[...]

In return for Burma’s ample supplies of crude oil and natural gas, and in return too for access to the Indian Ocean, China has provided the junta with the diplomatic equivalent of missile defence.

What a curse it seems to be, for all but the elite of most countries, to have natural resources… especially oil and natural gas. Well, and diamonds, gold, other gems, and anything else.

Western efforts to stop the bloodshed are limited. One of the consequences of the Bush era, in which regime change is an explicit aim of foreign policy, is that the US and Britain have become tainted messengers of democratic values. Efforts to undermine hostile regimes - either militarily or covertly through funding - can create real difficulties for opposition movements in those countries. It it is now all too easy for despots to brand their domestic opponents as foreign lackeys. It is an argument that echoes from Iran to Zimbabwe.

[...]

Britain’s own investment relationship with Burma is far from clear.

[...]

None of this helps the brave monks and citizens of Rangoon, Mandalay and Sittwe. About 300 of them were carted off in unmarked police trucks yesterday to an uncertain fate. If the junta manages to avoid a Tiananmen Square-style massacre happening in public, it will have few qualms about what happens to its detainees in the secrecy of its jails.

[added] The Buddhist Channel… who knew? Lots of up to date information there on the current crisis - they are gathering information from many different sources - but it looks like it would also be very interesting reading in quieter times as well.

[added 9/27] Marisacat has pulled together more updates. Things are pretty bad… I don’t know whether to be happy to sad that I don’t have cable… or a TV at all, really. Assuming they are covering this story, that is, in between Britney updates.

[added 9/28 6:30 pm] How long can Burma keep the monks locked up? (my question). And what will happen once they are released?

The New York Times seems to think that the protest has been contained and that the military junta of Burma/Myanmar (I really do not know which name to use) is in the process of winning this - and they may be, I have no idea - but are they planning on never releasing the monks?

BANGKOK, Sept. 28 — Myanmar’s armed forces appeared to have succeeded today in sealing tens of thousands of protesting monks inside their monasteries, but they continued to attack bands of civilian demonstrators who challenged them in the streets of the main city, Yangon.

[...]

Diplomats said there was no way to estimate the numbers of dead and wounded in Yangon or other cities, but they said it was certainly far higher than the number the junta has reported.

The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, said today that he believed the loss of life was “far greater” than is being reported, and Bob Davis, Australia’s ambassador to Myanmar, said that based on unconfirmed reports, he was certain that the death toll was “several multiples of the 10 acknowledged by the authorities.”

Myanmar is mostly sealed to the outside world. Human rights and exile groups with contacts inside the country said they had fewer incidents to report on Friday, and this was at least in part because of an apparent government clampdown on Internet and telephone communications.

Some are losing hope… not surprisingly: (Guardian UK)

“Today was the first day I went to the protests on my own. All my friends were too scared to go out on the streets after being gassed and shot at over the last few days. I woke up feeling more depressed and less optimistic than I have all week, but I felt it was my duty to carry on protesting. I was frightened, but aren’t we all? If everybody hid indoors, nothing will ever change, and we will never be able to draw attention to the hopeless situation our country is facing. I need to stand and be counted.

[...]

On the first day, I felt very excited. We went to the Shwedagon pagoda, Burma’s most sacred shine, where we saw 60,000 monks and quite a few ordinary members of the public. [...]

But my optimism faded on Thursday when we arrived to find the pagoda and nearby monastery deserted. It was then we learned the monks had been rounded up during a dawn raid and taken away by the military.

I am rapidly losing hope. After such a joyful beginning, I now don’t believe that we will be able to change anything.”

Others are not so sure that, with the world watching, things may not be different this time: (Guardian UK)

The last time Burmese soldiers fired on their own people there were few witnesses, and those who were there had no way of telling the story.

Two decades and a technological revolution later, the protesters challenging the government are ready to risk their lives so the world can hear their story. Armed with mobile phone cameras, they have become the eyes of the “saffron revolution”.

No foreign TV crews have been able to enter the country and networks such as the BBC and CNN have been forced to report from neighbouring Thailand. From the point of view of television, the situation is the same as it was in 1988, when the massacre of nearly 3,000 people went unreported by most TV news programmes.

Today, the regime has calculated that it can again win the propaganda battle if it controls the traditional media. It is wrong. The military had forgotten about the internet and the mobile phone, two weapons with which the protesters have managed to grab the world’s attention.

[...]

“I’m scared that if we stop sending photos and video the world will forget about us,” says Lynn, who writes and sends low-resolution photos to dissident groups abroad.

The Burmese people know they need to keep international attention on them if they want to succeed. For days they have risked their lives to stand in for the hundreds of journalists banned from Burma by a government that has much to hide.

via Chris Clarke, Avaaz.org has a letter campaign targeted to the Chinese government (which has the most influence on the military junta in Burma). The are trying to reach 250,000 signatures and they don’t have much farther to go.

bfp has a collection of stories and articles, some from those on the ground.

Lenin, at Lenin’s Tomb, takes a look at some of the motivations behind Western government and media’s reporting and support of the Burma rebellion (while they ignore “protests in Thailand against the US-supported putsch [which] have been repressed even more violently").

daily kos article by koNko on unconfirmed stories of a military coup.

Since Internet service was cut by the Junta yesterday I have been monitoring dissident sites, Chinese sources and Western MSM.

Unconfirmed rumors of escalated violence against Buddhist monks by the army overnight are likely to be true but apparently many solders refused to attached religious leaders and an insurrection ensured.

Separately, a Coup appears to have been organized by General Maung and the army is reported to be guarding the house of dissident Aung San Suu Kyi.

Irony. Or something.

I’ll probably update and edit this post from time to time.