Hundreds of anti-government demonstrators abandoned an attempt to approach the home of Myanmar's detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday after a show of force by police, witnesses said, averting a potentially violent confrontation.
A crowd of about 400 people led by monks peacefully gave up their attempt after being turned back at two different approaches, where police had placed barbed wire barricades.
Earlier yesterday, about 20,000 people led by monks demonstrated in Yangon's streets in what appeared to be the country's largest anti-government protest since a failed democratic uprising in 1988.
PHOTO: EPA
The group near Aung San Suu Kyi's house, including 150-200 Buddhist monks, had been turned back at one intersection, and then tried another, where they were confronted by scores of armed riot police.
Two monks went forward to the police lines to negotiate their entrance, but were apparently rebuffed. They then briefly prayed before walking in another direction, after which the crowd began to disperse, the witnesses said.
The monks had been carrying a large yellow banner saying that "Love and kindness must win over everything."
The heavy security presence, including two lines of police with a police truck and fire engine standing by, came after several days of a hands-off approach by authorities, who had clearly been trying to avoid provoking the well-disciplined, widely respected monks. They are aware that mistreating the monks would likely cause public outrage in staunchly Buddhist Myanmar.
A group of more than 500 monks and sympathizers had been allowed past barricades Saturday to walk to Aung San Suu Kyi's house, where she greeted them from her gate in her first public appearance in more than four years. One of the monks later said she looked "fit and well."
A photo posted yesterday on several blogs of Myanmar political activists showed her in traditional Myanmar dress in a doorway in the gate to her compound, behind police with riot shields facing the crowd.
Some 10,000 monks marched from the famous Shwedagon Pagoda in Myanmar's biggest city, Yangon, to the nearby Sule Pagoda before passing the US embassy, witnesses said.
The monks shouted support for Aung San Suu Kyi, while a crowd of about 10,000 people protected them by forming a human chain along the route. While authorities had not intervened in yesterday's march, plainclothes police trailed the marchers. Some, armed with shotguns, were posted at street corners along the route.
The monks' defiant marches have given life to a protest movement that began a month ago after the government raised fuel prices.
A monk gave a speech yesterday calling for Aung San Suu Kyi's release and national reconciliation, the witnesses said, squarely positioning their cause with her long-running struggle for democracy.
By linking their cause to Aung San Suu Kyi's pro-democracy struggle, which has seen her detained for about 12 of the last 18 years, the monks increased the pressure on the junta to decide whether to crack down or compromise with the demonstrators.
"It's significant because the military allowed them to pass [Aung San Suu Kyi's house]," said David Steinberg, a Myanmar expert at Georgetown University in Washington. "That and other images indicate the military is not prepared, unless things get worse, to directly confront the monks in their uniforms."
Steinberg, monitoring events from Singapore, said this was in contrast to 1990, when the military crushed a protest by hundreds of monks in Mandalay.
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