Myanmar's ruling junta threatened yesterday to "take action" against Buddhist monks who led an estimated 100,000 people in Yangon in the biggest protest in nearly 20 years, state media reported.
In the first official reaction to a week of escalating protests led by the monks, state media reported that Religion Minister Brigadier General Thura Myint Maung had met senior religious leaders yesterday to deliver the warning.
"If the monks go against the rules and regulations in the authority of the Buddhist teachings, we will take action under the existing law," state TV quoted the minister as saying.
PHOTO: AFP
Led by a phalanx of Buddhist monks, tens of thousands of protesters marched through Yangon yesterday, the largest crowd to demonstrate in Myanmar's biggest city since a 1988 pro-democracy uprising that was brutally crushed by the military.
Some participants claimed there were several hundred thousand marchers in their ranks, but an international aid agency official with employees monitoring the crowd estimated the size was well over 50,000 and approaching 100,000.
From the front of the march, witnesses could see a more than a 1km stretch of an eight-lane road filled with people.
After a week of marching by the monks, the protests have become explicitly political, though the clerics prefer to make their point indirectly through chants and prayers at key locations.
Members of the public who have joined them have taken up chanting the slogans of the pro-democracy movement: national reconciliation -- meaning dialogue between the government and opposition parties -- freedom for political prisoners and pleas for adequate food, shelter and clothing.
The monks' protest raised the political ante on Saturday when a crowd of more than 500 people was allowed to pass by detained democracy leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi's house, where she greeted them in her first public appearance in more than four years.
Yesterday's march, launched from the Shwedagon pagoda, the country's most sacred shrine, gathered participants as it wended its way through Yangon's streets under cloudy skies. Some 20,000 monks took the lead, with onlookers joining in on what had been billed as a day of general protest.
The march covered at least 15km, passing by the old campus of Rangoon University, a hotbed of protest in past times. Students were seen joining yesterday's march. Marchers also passed the offices of the Defense Ministry, where they said prayers for peace.
Security forces were not in evidence along the march route, though riot police were stationed at intersections leading to Aung Sang Suu Kyi's house.
In the central city of Mandalay, 500 to 600 monks set off shortly after noon on their own protest march, also undisturbed by the authorities.
The current protests began on Aug. 19 as a movement against economic hardship, after the government sharply raised fuel prices. But they have their basis in long-standing dissatisfaction with the repressive military government.
Diplomats and analysts said Myanmar's military rulers had so far showed unexpected restraint because of pressure from the country's key trading partner and diplomatic ally, China.
A Southeast Asian diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity as a matter of protocol, said the regime was under pressure from Beijing to avoid a crackdown just as its larger neighbor has pressured it to speed up other democratic changes.
"The Myanmar government is tolerating the protesters and not taking any action against the monks because of pressure from China," the diplomat said.
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