Living Silence in Burma (20 page)

In other parts of the energy sector, the regime began reaping profits, with the promise of far larger amounts to come. A number of Asian companies signed joint ventures to explore and extract oil and natural gas and to build hydropower plants. Still, throughout the early 2000s, the regime had to rely on printing money to cover its expenditures, leading to high rates of inflation. In 2002, the inflation rate exceeded 55 per cent, and in 2005, it was estimated at just over 20 per cent.
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By the end of 2007, it had jumped again to at least 35 per cent.
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Young people from both urban and rural areas poured out of Burma looking for jobs in other
more dynamic economies so that they could support themselves and their families. This was facilitated by the authorities’ loosening of restrictions on applying for passports, as the generals recognized that remittances could inject much-needed money into the economy.

As many as 1.5 million Burmese workers (legal and illegal) were in Thailand in 2008, with large numbers in India, Malaysia and Singapore as well.
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While most travelled back home rarely, they could transfer money to their families whenever they wanted through an informal banking system run by agents in Burma and abroad.

For the poor in both urban and rural areas, the government provided few direct support services. As a result, some activists and other individuals turned to social work. In the Rangoon area, small groups started rice distribution programmes, provided treatment and support for people living with AIDS – often in conjunction with sympathetic monks – and ran orphanages. Monks in Rangoon Division and other parts of the country established primary schools and boarding houses to serve poor children, many of whom were not orphans, but their parents could not provide for them. The Sitagu Monastery in Sagaing even opened a hospital and an eye clinic with services free of charge for people of all religions, and Christian, Muslim and secular organizations have also run free clinics.

The UN, international NGOs and Burmese organizations have also provided services directly to communities in various parts of the country, although they are often hampered by changing restrictions and limitations on where they can work. Relief and development workers frequently have to operate on the basis of understandings with the authorities, but without necessarily having authorization on paper. As a result, they are never certain whether or not their projects might suddenly be halted or even whether they themselves might face trouble. As one community worker put it, ‘We feel like gophers. We pop our heads up, look around, do something, and go back down into our holes.’

Monks take to the streets

In mid-August 2007, the regime unexpectedly announced a large price hike for diesel and compressed natural gas. Transportation and food costs skyrocketed, with a devastating effect on the poor. Almost immediately, the 88 Generation Students Group began their own small protest marches in Rangoon and called for the regime to rescind the price increases. Worried that the number of marchers would grow, the authorities quickly arrested most of the leaders of the 88 Generation Students Group, although a few were able to escape arrest for a period of time.

Specially trained USDA units and members of the more recently formed
Swan Arr Shin
(Masters of Force) paramilitary organization patrolled the streets in the following weeks, ready to beat up anyone who dared to continue the protests.
Swan Arr Shin
members included local thugs and day labourers from poorer quarters and satellite towns. People were afraid and kept quiet.

Following that, a small network of politically educated monks decided to continue the demonstrations in their own way: by calmly proceeding through the streets chanting the
metta sutta
of loving kindness. The objective was to awaken the regime to the suffering its policies were causing ordinary people and to encourage them to make changes.

On 5 September, hundreds of monks appeared in the streets of Pakkoku carrying signs denouncing the price hike. They were cheered on by thousands of clapping residents, but the authorities reacted angrily and tied up and beat some of the monks. News of this shocking act of disrespect spread around the country by exile radio and word of mouth, sparking mass indignation.

Five days later, the All Burma Monks’ Alliance (ABMA) announced its formation and issued a statement calling on the regime to apologize to the monks, reduce the prices of fuel and other basic commodities, release all political prisoners, and begin a dialogue with the democratic movement for national reconciliation.
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The statement also threatened that if the regime did not comply by 17 September, the monks would initiate a religious boycott, refusing to receive offerings from the military and their families or to perform religious rites for them. The regime ignored their demands, expecting that few monks would dare to participate. But many monks were so upset about the regime’s callousness towards monks and the people that they decided to participate, with or without the permission of their abbots.

Starting on 18 September, monks in Rangoon, Mandalay, Sittwe and other towns gathered at famous temples or city centres and then proceeded to walk through the streets, often for hours at a time in the pouring rain, chanting the
metta sutta
and waving their religious flags.
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Some of the monks carried overturned alms bowls to symbolize the monks’ refusal to accept alms from the authorities. Because of the saffron colour of some of the monks’ robes, the movement was dubbed ‘the Saffron Revolution’ by outsiders, although most monks in Burma actually wear maroon-coloured robes.

Many ordinary people were moved to tears by the monks’ efforts on their behalf. A number felt guilty that the monks were marching and they
weren’t, so they tried to join in. During the first few days, the monks did not allow lay people to participate. By keeping it a religious movement, they hoped, the authorities would not react with violence. Many young people urged the monks to let them join, however, while some of the leading monks thought broadening the movement would make it more effective. Thus, lay people were allowed to form a human chain on either side of the marching monks.

Although the vast majority of the monks who joined were young and had no political experience, some of the ABMA leaders had taken part in the 1988 demonstrations or the 1990 monks’ boycott and had been imprisoned with student activists. Since their release, some had become respected lecturers and administrators in the larger temples in Rangoon. The 88 Generation Students Group leaders had re-established contact with them and some NLD members patronized their temples. Some of the leading monks who emerged in 2007 had been children in 1988 but had later received some political training through democracy activists in exile or other channels. On 21 September, the ABMA, together with other democracy activists, issued a statement urging the people to join the monks in order to ‘banish the evil regime’.
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On 22 September, one group of marching monks turned down University Avenue towards Aung San Suu Kyi’s house. They were stopped at the barriers by the police, but then allowed to proceed, apparently because the police weren’t sure what to do. Aung San Suu Kyi briefly appeared at her gate with tears in her eyes before the monks moved on. News of this moment was spread through the international and Burmese exile media, electrifying the population and leading yet more people to join.

Starting on 24 September, Zarganar, the famous comedian, Kyaw Thu, a famous actor, and Aung Way, a well-known poet, gave offerings to the gathered monks at Shwedagon Pagoda before they set off on their daily procession. The monks in Rangoon also allowed the NLD and other democracy activists to walk in the middle of their processions holding their flags but strictly forbade anyone from carrying weapons.

As many as 100,000 people were on the streets in Rangoon. The second-largest congregation of demonstrators was in Sittwe, the capital of Arakan State. There, tens of thousands of people congregated near the statue of U Ottama, the famous Arakanese monk who had led anti-colonial demonstrations many decades before. Thousands were on the streets of Mandalay and smaller numbers came out in more than twenty other towns as well.

While the NLD leadership had originally been reluctant to join in the
demonstrations in Rangoon, in the townships outside the capital, many NLD organizers and youths played an active role in urging people to participate. One NLD youth organizer from a small town in Arakan State said that in places in Arakan State where there were no big monasteries, NLD members took the lead, organizing short demonstrations in which people shouted slogans such as ‘Reduce the prices’ and ‘Free Aung San Suu Kyi’.

The regime was shocked by the speed with which the demonstrations were gaining momentum and, at first, not sure how to proceed. Using violence against the monks in Pakkoku had backfired, but it looked as if the demonstrations were not going to fizzle out on their own. Once the demonstrations became clearly political, General Than Shwe gave the order to crush them. Apparently, the general never considered responding to any of the protesters’ demands.

On 24 September, the regime had the state-controlled monastic council issue a warning to monks to stay out of secular affairs. Then, on the 25th, the authorities in Rangoon and Mandalay declared a night-time curfew and ordered the monks to get off the streets. The next morning, the
tatmadaw
soldiers and riot police poured into the streets of Rangoon ready to take action.

In front of the Shwedagon Pagoda, U Kosita, one of the monks who had emerged as a leader, used his megaphone to ask the riot police to stop and think. He told them, ‘We’re doing this for everybody, including you.’ But a riot policeman replied curtly: ‘If you [monks] don’t get on the trucks, we’ll have to shoot you.’ The monks knew that getting on the trucks meant being taken into custody, so U Kosita replied, ‘Well, we can’t get on. If you want to shoot, shoot. We’ll die in front of Shwedagon Pagoda.’ Then the riot police began beating the monks and others with iron rods.

That day and the following days, the soldiers and riot police used tear-gas and rubber and live bullets as well to inflict injuries and sometimes death and to scare the crowds into dispersing. Because they did not want any images of the violence to get out, the security forces especially targeted people with cameras and video cameras. Kenji Nagai, a Japanese journalist, was shot dead as he was running with his camera.
Swan Arr Shin
militia members participated in beating people, while the security forces also arrested anyone they could grab, including some ill-fated onlookers in tea shops.

That night and the next, soldiers and riot police raided the monasteries from which many of the leading monks had come. Neighbours remained
in anguished silence in their houses as they heard monks being beaten and taken away.

Over the next few days, defiant crowds of mostly young people continued to gather in front of the raided temples and near former demonstration sites. In two instances, people were shot and killed. After that, the demonstrations dissipated as there were troops, USDA and
Swan Arr Shin
members everywhere, and the leadership was gone. Many more temples were raided in the following days, and monks from the teaching monasteries were ordered to go back to their home towns. Some of the leading monks and participants were able to make their way to neighbouring countries.

No images came out from Sittwe, Mandalay, Pakkoku or other smaller towns where demonstrations took place, as demonstrators in those towns had little or no access to cell phones and the Internet. But in Rangoon, numbers of lay citizens and monks took it upon themselves to become on-the-spot reporters and send out eyewitness accounts, photographs and videos by phone and Internet. Exile media groups also worked hard to get the news out – and back into Burma. As the people on the streets hoped, governments and leading figures around the world urged the regime to handle the peaceful demonstrators with restraint, although China and India asserted that it was Burma’s internal affair. Nevertheless, General Than Shwe was unfazed by the international community’s pleas. He authorized the use of force, and the soldiers acted accordingly, despite the fact that many in the military apparently did not want to harm the monks.

Afterwards, the regime stated that only fifteen people had been killed, including the Japanese reporter. Human rights groups, however, believed the number was much higher. As many as four thousand people were detained in hastily prepared detention centres, where monks were disrobed and detainees were interrogated to determine the extent of their participation.

Two years later, approximately one thousand people remained behind bars because of their participation in the August and September demonstrations. Several leading members of the 88 Generation Students Group were sentenced to sixty-five years in prison, and Nay Phone Latt, one of the main bloggers who got news out about the demonstrations, was sentenced to twenty and a half years. The regime clearly wanted to send a strong message that no one should consider organizing such protests again. Even some monks came to the conclusion that only violence could remove such a brutal regime.

Why weren’t the protests successful? As Aung Way, the poet, said, ‘We underestimated the SPDC. We didn’t expect they would be that ruthless with the monks.’ He and others also noted that the activists who had been playing a strategic role behind the scenes hadn’t planned well enough how to organize and continue the movement. Another analyst noted they had also not thought about how to try to persuade the authorities to negotiate. Meanwhile, the regime knew it could count on China and India for a certain degree of diplomatic cover, while the generals felt confident that other members of the international community wouldn’t directly intervene.