Buddhist monks in Upper Burma are threatening a national uprising on May 25 if the repressive State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) does not agree to a dialogue with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her Committee Representing the People's Parliament (CRPP).
According to reports from the All Burma Young Monks' Union (ABYMU), based on the Thai-Burma border, a monks' organisation, based in Mandalay, Red Roc (the roc is a legendary bird), has said it will turn the monasteries into strike centres if the regime does not end its military rule. It has also threatened a protest march on the capital, Rangoon.
Burma's monasteries were the nerve centres of the mass uprising of 1988, which was brutally crushed by the military, and the country's 3 million monks have been a target for repression ever since.
In the last month, the regime has surrounded several monasteries in Upper Burma with soldiers and allowed only those with military officers' permission to leave. In the towns of Pago and Armarapura, soldiers have interfered in religious ceremonies.
According to an "emergency declaration" from the ABYMU, the regime put its riot police on alert on April 21 and instructed them to use force against even minor signs of dissent. Military chief Khin Nyunt travelled to Mandalay on April 23 to try to intimidate the monks out of any action.
As well, on April 26, the military arrested Aye Tha Aung, a CRPP member. He is yet to be released. The following day, Suu Kyi claimed that the regime had the previous month arrested more than 40 youth members of her National League for Democracy.
The monks' threat may signal the beginning of a new wave of anti-regime organising within Burma. Exiled democracy activists had hoped that demonstrations on September 9, 1999 would spark a repeat of the 1988 uprising but, while exiles demonstrated around the world, repression within Burma proved too fierce and there was little visible protest.
While Burma's people have lost all confidence in the military regime, the SPDC is continuing to gain the support of the region's governments, keen to exploit Burma's rich national resources. On May 1, the economic ministers of the Association of South-East Asian Nations met in Rangoon, where they were told by their host, Khin Nyunt, that the SPDC was building "a country that is peaceful, stable and economically vibrant, with people full of zest and full of confidence in the future".
In Canberra on May 5, 100 pro-democracy activists, many of them refugees, rallied outside the Burmese embassy to express their support for the monks' demands and to call for the regime to open negotiations with the CRPP about a transition from military rule. The activists are planning an action outside the headquarters of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission in Sydney on May 19 and a three-day sit-in outside the embassy from May 25-27.
BY SEAN HEALY