Pressure mounts on Burma's allies to intervene

"United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon should hold urgent talks with the foreign ministers of China, India and Singapore, the current Asean chair, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly and lead a joint attempt to encourage peaceful dialogue in Burma," said the International Crisis Group out of New York.

The Brussels-based think tank urged China, India, and Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) to back Ban Ki-moon's call on Burma's junta to exercise restraint in the face of growing peaceful protests and put their full weight behind UN efforts to find a solution to the country's political crisis.

"The regime has a long history of violent reactions to peaceful demonstrations," said Gareth Evans, president of the International Crisis Group. "If serious loss of life is to be averted, those UN members with influence over the government are going to have to come together fast." 

Yangon has been seized by monk-led peaceful protests since September 18, which swelled to include up to 100,000 Buddhist clergy and laymen followers on Monday and Tuesday.

The regime looked poised to crack down on the barefoot rebellion Wednesday. Truckloads of troops have been posted at City Hall, opposite Sule Pagoda in downtown Yangon where the protests have congregated in the past week.

A 60-day curfew was imposed on the city Tuesday night, and regulation 144 which prohibits gatherings of more than five people, has been enforced.   

Yangon General Hospital has reportedly been put on alert.               New York-based Human Rights Watch also appealed to Burma's allies including China, Thailand, India and Russia, to put pressure on the regime to avoid violence.

"The Burmese military has shown in the past a willingness to kill peaceful protestors to end demonstrations," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "If the military government is going to listen to anyone, it will be countries with which it has close military and economic ties. Now is the time for these countries to show that they care about the health and welfare of the Burmese people." 

In 1988, Burma was rocked by nationwide rallies 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. That uprising was crushed in September 1988, when the army unleashed its fury on its own people, killing an estimated 3,000, including hundreds of protesting monks.

Economic hardships are partly behind the latest protests.

Without warning or consultations, the government more than doubled fuel prices on August 15, exacerbating overnight the plight of impoverished Burma people. The country has suffered double-digit inflation since 2006.

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

Burma's 400,000-member Buddhist 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.

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

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

//(Deutsche Presse-Agentur/DPA)