The latest protests began Aug. 19 in response to sharp, unannounced fuel price increases of up to 500 percent, immediately raising the prices of goods and transportation. They were led at first by former student protesters and other activists, but most of the leaders had been arrested or were in hiding when the monks began their protests last Tuesday. Since then, the monks’ protests have spread from city to city and have become more overtly political.
Since the military crushed a peaceful nationwide uprising in 1988, killing an estimated 3,000 civilians, the country, formerly known as Burma, has sunk further into poverty and repression and become a symbol for the outside world of the harsh military subjugation of a people.
The largest street protests in two decades against Myanmar’s military rulers gained momentum Sunday as thousands of onlookers cheered huge columns of Buddhist monks and shouted support for the detained pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. It came one day after a group of several hundred monks paid respects to Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi at the gate of her home, the first time she has been seen in public in more than four years.
Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, has been locked inside her home for 12 of the last 18 years, and the government has arrested thousands of political prisoners. Although she has been sealed off from the public and has been allowed almost no visitors, Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, 62, remains a martyr and rallying symbol for the population.
Foreign governments and human rights groups warned of possible bloodshed. “The regime has a long history of violent reactions to peaceful demonstrations,” Gareth Evans, head of the International Crisis Group, said in a statement.
“If serious loss of life is to be averted, those United Nations members with influence over the government are going to have to come together fast,” he said in an allusion to China, Russia and India. The United States and Europe have led a tightening economic boycott that has been undermined by trade and assistance from Myanmar’s neighbors, mainly China but also India and some Southeast Asian nations. China, the nation with the most influence over Myanmar because of its trade and economic ties, today repeated its public stance of noninterference in Myanmar’s internal affairs.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/world/asia/24myanmar.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&fta=y
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/world/asia/25cnd-myanmar.html?hp)
* See many available video clips of the demonstration and responses from other nations on youtube
