Democracy Icon Aung San Suu Kyi Greets Myanmar Monks
YANGON - Stepping out of her home in tears, democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi greeted Buddhist monks Saturday in a landmark moment for a swelling protest movement against the military junta.
Armed guards usually block the road leading to the rambling lakeside house, but in an unprecedented move, they allowed about 1,000 monks to walk past the place where she has been detained for most of the past 18 years.
As the rain poured down, Aung San Suu Kyi walked out with two other women and cried as she paid her respects to the monks, the witnesses said.
They stopped outside her home for about 15 minutes and chanted a Buddhist prayer: “May we be completely free from all danger, may we be completely free from all grief, may we be completely free from poverty, may we have peace in heart and mind.”
There was no interruption from about 20 uniformed security police, who had opened the roadblock. After the monks left the road was again closed.
The witnesses said Aung San Suu Kyi did not appear to speak to the monks, who have been leading an escalating show of strength that has left the junta facing its most prolonged challenge in nearly two decades.
The 62-year-old has become an internationally recognised figurehead of the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar since her National League for Democracy won 1990 elections by a landslide.
The military has never recognised the result, however, and the Nobel Peace Prize laureate now has virtually no contact with the outside world, apart from a live-in maid and periodic visits from her doctor.
Earlier, thousands of monks had taken to the streets in Myanmar’s main city, Yangon, and its second city, Mandalay, in their sixth straight day of marches.
The monks — who are deeply respected in devoutly Buddhist Myanmar — have become the effective standard-bearers for a protest movement that broke out a month ago after a huge hike in fuel prices and has since gone nationwide.
Nearly 2,000 marched and prayed in Yangon, and a similar rally in Mandalay — an important centre of Buddhist learning — drew at least half that figure, witnesses said.
Win Min, a Thai-based Myanmar analyst, said they were stepping up pressure on the junta to highlight economic suffering in the impoverished nation.
“Monks are representing people’s sufferings. They want the junta to address economic issues,” Win Min said.
“The anti-junta movement is certainly gaining momentum, because the sheer number of monks has risen sharply over the past week,” the analyst said.
The mounting turmoil has raised concern in the international community and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has pledged to bring up the issue at the UN General Assembly in New York next week.
Some monks are refusing to accept donations from the military in a gesture seen as a severe rebuke tantamount to excommunication for Buddhists.
Buddhists believe giving alms daily is an important religious duty.
The junta normally does not tolerate the slightest show of public dissent, and authorities during the past month have arrested more than 150 people.
They include Min Ko Naing, considered Myanmar’s most prominent opposition leader after Aung San Suu Kyi.
Police so far have made no effort to stop the monks in Yangon over the past week, as the junta is worried a violent crackdown could spark public outrage, analysts say.
Monks were credited with helping to rally support for a 1988 pro-democracy uprising that was crushed with the deaths of hundreds, possibly thousands, of people.
Meanwhile a Buddhist group called for nationwide prayer vigils.
“We ask every citizen to join our vigils,” said a purported spokesman from The Alliance of All Burmese Buddhist Monks, an underground group, speaking by telephone from Myanmar and declining to give his name.
The vigils would start from Sunday for three days, and the group urged the public to stand outside their homes for 15 minutes of prayers at 8:00 pm each night.
© 2007 Agence France Press
Aung San Suu Kyi needs our strident and unstinted support in bringing democracy back to Myanmar ( yeah i can hear ‘W’ and the Chinese rolling on the floor laughing ). Ofcourse left to us we would stuff our version of democracy down their collective throats by sending Blackwater employees to guard Aung San Suu Kyi’s house !!
Its amazing how strong she has been all these years fighting the repressive Myanmarese generals, silenced, arrested and sidelined but still protesting. Its too bad she will never be recognized and the movement will die its natural death in this unipolar world.
Is the world truly unipolar? I think not. I think the power distribution is unipolar — for now. I offer my respect to Aung Sun Suu Kyi for her determination and courage. I honor the Buddhist monks for stepping forward to ease their people.
One small thing that would be supportive: I ask the media (and all writers who care about this situation), please, use the word BURMA (not Myanmar), and RANGOON (not Yangon) when discussing events there. The thuggish generals who refused to leave office when Aung Sun Suu Kyi and her party won the 1990 election have come up with these alternate names for the same reason Ho Chi Minh’s party “renamed” Saigon — to intimidate the people with a show of power (nothing like renaming your country, or its capital!).
Thanks for Burma and Rangoon!
Made my day.
Dear world:
A helping of velvet for all!
My mind goes back many years to the sight of Buddhist monks immolating themselves on the streets of Saigon to protest the endless war there. I hope it will not come down to that in Burma. Fortunately, I think most of at least the rank and file military in Burma are Buddhist, so the rulers would think twice before ordering them to forcefully suppress the monks.
There is an interesting article in today’s Common Dreams titled Pinwheels for Peace are Blowin’ in the Wind. It is about children making pinwheels for peace and it occurred to me that those could well be prayer wheels for peace.
Let us hope that those children’s prayers for peace reach Burma…and the rest of the world.
Om mani padme hum.
AdeleTheCzech wrote:
“…please, use the word BURMA (not Myanmar), and RANGOON (not Yangon)
“The thuggish generals who refused to leave office when Aung Sun Suu Kyi and her party won the 1990 election have come up with these alternate names for the same reason Ho Chi Minh’s party “renamed” Saigon — to intimidate the people with a show of power (nothing like renaming your country, or its capital!)”
This Kolach-eating part-Czech agrees that Burma & Rangoon ought to be the recognized names for the reason given above. As for Saigon/Ho Chi Minh city, I hate public features to be named after any person. I refuse to call Boulder Dam by the name of the man whose name was given to “Hoovervilles.”
However, the city now called by the Vietnamese government by the name of Ho Chi Minh, isn’t quite the same. Ho wasn’t a crappy president like Hoover or a thuggish general who oppressed his people as in Burma, he was the person who would have overwhelmingly won the popular vote of the entire population of the country if the United States had allowed elections.
The US didn’t allow elections because Ike was told Ho would win by eighty percent or more. The United States set up and supported thugs as their puppet government and when a thug didn’t suit the US, the US killed him. The puppet government territory was most often referred to by the name of the city run by the puppet government thugs rather than as a country.
The city in question was once known as Prey Nokor by the original Kymer inhabitants, and only over time came to be referred to as Sai Gon as people from the north moved in. Names of places tend to come from the trading and business class and these may have have been Chinese as the name seems to be Chinese, not Kymer nor even a name from those from the north whose native tongue has come to be called “Vietnamese.” The city was a trading port, the main trading port of Cambodia before it became Vietnam. Chinese traders had spread to many ports in the waters bordering the continent. In any event the city had never been officially called Saigon prior to the French invasion and occupation.
It was the French thugs, invaders, conquerers, and occupiers who gave the name “Saigon” to the city as its official name. When they left, the new thugs, invaders, conquerers, and occupiers kept the name given by the former imperialists.
If that isn’t enough to weaken anyone’s homage to the name “Saigon,” as noted above that name is possibly Chinese, and China was hardly historically a good enough friend to the Vietnamese people to be honored by a Chinese name for a city in Vietnam.
So, while I still don’t like places named for individuals, my reading of history suggests that Ho Chi Minh was as popular, perhaps considerably more popular, than the chap whose name was given to the US capital city, other cities, an entire state, and a whole slew of counties across the land.
The most vocal Vietnamese people who ardently support the name “Saigon” seem to me to be one-time collaborators of the imperialist supporters of the former “Saigon government.” If the name Ho Chi Minh City is a slap in the face to the thuggish imperialists who were driven from the land, well so be it.
adeletheczech … sorry … Myanma is the official name of the country in Burmese.
wiki-”Within the Burmese language, Myanma is the written, literary name of the country, while Bama or Bamar (from which “Burma” derives) is the oral, colloquial name”
Irrespective of what the english colonialists would like to call it the locals have always referred to the ‘burmese union’ as Myanma. The fact that the thuggish generals renamed it to the original cannot tarnish the name.
Thanks, advocate, for setting the record straight about Ho Chi Minh, and the city named after him. He is a revolutionary hero.
What is going on now is giving me the greatest hope I’ve had for the country in the 25 years I’ve been aware of the human rights violations which regularly occur there. I’m wondering how many people are aware that George Orwell spent some of his younger years as a British Army officer stationed there as he watched the country fall apart.
After the Tsunami, I wrote a blog about Burma with a number of links that are still useful to review, and gain more information about the country. http://net-traveler.blogspot.com/
Another interesting link below was published on this site, it references the fact that the 2004 Bush campaign had some of the clothing they sold for the election made in Burma in violation of our ban on doing business with them. No surprise here:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0319-03.htm
The government has had an active policy of depopulation and slavery for decades.
Recently, a huge natural gas reserve has been found offshore. I fear yet more of the same atrocities will only escalate.
I view the protest of so many monks as a sea change for the country.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE!! POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!
just another reminder that US foreign policy has absolutely nothing to do with promoting indigenously-led democratic movements against tyranny.
Just imagine what benevolent influence the US could have wielded (multilateral international pressure)in 1990 in backing Burma’s election results.
If only they had proven reserves of oil…….