Burmese Clashes

A few weeks ago I was reading Palin’s account of his treks through the Himalaya, which I referred to briefly in the post Fighting for Peace.

Compiled four years ago, the author noted stirrings of unrest in the country and through the skillful narrative one could not but hope that such prescience would fail to come true.

As the monks marched earlier this week, peacefully yet deliberately, the knowledge that the lack of government intervention was merely the calm before the storm became overpowering.

Sure enough, within the past twenty-four hours the government has conducted overnight raids on six monasteries, smashing windows and beating sleeping monks.

While many succeeded in escaping, those who did not were rounded into military trucks and removed from the monasteries.

Moreover, two members of the National League for Democracy, the party led by the eloquent pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi [below], were also arrested overnight.

For the thousands of protesters gathered in the country’s capital Rangoon, conditions on the streets are little better as the military avoid firing guns, but exact violence through beating people with rifle butts.

The protests against the government commenced on August 15, in response to the decision to double the price of petrol and diesel, and increase the cost of compressed gas five-times over.

As the increases hiked up transport prices, pro-democracy activists led initial protests in the capital, with 400 participants on August 19 – the largest demonstration witnessed in the military nation for several years.

While the government moved to arrest individuals, protest fever spread throughout the country and on September 5, after skirmishes between protesters and troops in the central town of Pakokku, the monks weighed in.

Highly revered and politically active, the entrance of the monks infused the protests with new momentum.

On September 6, monks in Pakokku briefly took government officials hostage and issued the government a deadline of 17 September, on which they must apologise.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, no apology emerged, prompting the monks to protest in much greater numbers and withdraw their religious services from the military and their families.

What commenced as a row over oil prices, and subsequently an apology, has now become a window of opportunity for the Burmese people to overthrow the current military junta.

On September 21, the Alliance of All Burmese Buddhist Monks issued a statement describing the military government as “the enemy of the people” and pledged to continue their protests until they had “wiped the military dictatorship from the land of Burma.”

The rallying call has certainly been heeded: this week the numbers of protesters has swelled into thousands, and key members of the opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD) are now joining the protests, after initially distancing themselves from the action.

The tensions in the country have been simmering for a few years now, but for many observers, developments this week have been swift and worrying.

With international press banned from the region, television networks often have little to work with other than the shaky images captured on mobile phones of locals and tourists.

Whether the current protests will provide the foundation for a burgeoning revolt against the junta remains to be seen; for now however, events must be watched closely.

Perhaps Burma will be the political mouse that roared.