Burmese junta bans monk-led protest

About 100 monks arrived at the famed pagoda about noon in open defiance of a government order Monday night to abide by Buddhist "rules and regulations."

The order, which was repeated by state media Tuesday morning, has signalled that Burma's junta is ready to crack down on the monks' barefoot rebellion, which climaxed Monday with up to 100,000 marchers in Rangoon and other cities.

On Monday night, Brigadier-General Thura Myint Maung, the minister of religion, issued a televised warning to all monks to obey Buddhist rules that prohibit the clergy from engaging in political activities.

Burma's military-controlled Buddhist clergy, the Sangha Nayaka Committee, met with abbots of Rangoon Buddhist temples Tuesday morning and instructed them to prevent all monks from marching and to send visiting student monks back to the provinces.

"They told us to prevent a repeat of 1988," said an abbot of a temple in Rangoon's Yankin township.

In 1988, Burma was rocked by nationwide demonstrations against the military regime's incompetent rule, which had dragged the country down from one of the wealthiest in Asia prior to World War II to an economic basket case by 1987.

Economic hardships are partly behind the recent protests. Without warning or consultations, the government more than doubled fuel prices on August 15, exacerbating the plight of the impoverished Myanmar people overnight. The country has been suffering from double-digit inflation since 2006.

"What right do the military have to tell us not to protest?" said the Yankin temple abbot. "The monks belong to the laymen, so if the Burmese people are poor, the monks are poor, too."

Anti-inflation protests first started in Rangoon on August 19, led by former student activists and opposition politicians. Earlier this month, the movement was taken up by the monkhood.

Burma's 400,000-strong monkhood has a long history of political activism in Burma, having played a pivotal role in the independence struggle against Great Britain in 1947 and the anti-military demonstrations of 1988, which ended in bloodshed.

Observers have been amazed that Burma's military rulers have waited so long to suppress the monks' rebellion and attribute it to the influence of China on the pariah state.

"I can see no other explantion for their restraint," one European diplomat said. "They've shot monks in the past."

China is one of the few countries allied with Burma's military junta, having used its veto to prevent the United Nations Security Council from further pressuring the regime last year.//dpa