Yangon
Anti-military protests spread Friday in central Myanmar where the
country's military rulers cracked down on rebellious Buddhist monks,
sources said.
Earlier this week Buddhist monks took to the streets in Pakokku, 530
kilometres north of Yangon, to protest the government's decision
last month to double fuel prices and the arrests of over 100
protestors in Yangon.
On Friday, protests spread to nearby Aung-lan town, 515 km north of
Yangon, where anti-government posters were put up around the town
encouraging the masses to rise up.
Myanmar's state controlled media Friday admitted for the first time
that the military regime was at loggerheads with rebellious Buddhist
monks in Pakokku, central Myanmar.
The New Light of Myanmar, a government mouthpiece, acknowledged that
security personnel had clashed with hundreds of protesting monks
Wednesday in Pakokku and opened fire to disperse the demonstrating
monks.
The state media also confirmed reports that 20 Magway Division
military officials visited the Bawdimandine monastery in Pakokku on
Thursday and their vehicle was burned by stone-throwing monks.
According to eyewitnesses in Pakkaku, monks on Friday attacked the
Nay La Store, owned by a prominent government official, and allowed
a mob to sack the place. Government officials were reportedly
fleeing the city.
Buddhist monks have a long history of political activism in Myanmar,
a predominantly Buddhist country.
Monks played a prominent role in Myanmar's struggle for independence
from Great Britain in 1948 and joined students in the anti-military
demonstrations that rocked the country in 1988, which ended in
bloodshed.
Like the recent protests, the 1988 mass demonstrations were sparked
by rising discontent with the military junta's mismanagement of the
economy and refusal to introduce some semblance of democracy.
After the 1988 events, the military junta, although still in
control, dropped its socialist ideology and opened the country up to
foreign investments and market forces.
But the generals' brutal 1988 crackdown on the pro-democracy
movement, that left an estimated 3,000 dead, resulted in the
stoppage of nearly all international aid to the regime.
The aid blockade and other sanctions have been kept in place for the
past 19 years. Although the junta allowed a general election in
1990, it ignored the outcome when 80 percent of the votes went to
the National League for Democracy (NLD) of opposition leader Aung
San Suu Kyi, sealing its pariah status in the West.
Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate, has been kept under house arrest
since May, 2003. Her continued incarceration was harshly criticized
earlier this week by US President George W Bush, currently attending
the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Sydney.
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