Two years after "saffron revolution," Myanmar monks under thumb

Sep 22, 2009, 8:12 GMT

   Bangkok - Two years after Myanmar's Buddhist monks launched their unsuccessful 'saffron revolution,' more than 250 monks and nuns remained in prison and the monasteries have been infiltrated by the ruling military junta, a Human Rights Watch report released Tuesday said.

   'The movement as such has been forced underground,' the report's author, Bertil Lintner, said at a press conference in Bangkok. 'But it doesn't mean it's dead. Monks are not foolish. They are not going to take to the streets to commit suicide, but when the time is right, I am sure you will see the monks again.'

   Myanmar's ruling military generals have always shown public reverence for the monkhood but have also tried to systematically control the institution's political activism.

   Since 2007, the controls have intensified, especially in anticipation of the general election in 2010, which promises to be neither free nor fair, Linter said.

   'There are agents in all major monasteries watching who is going in and out,' Lintner said. 'The monasteries have been infiltrated with informers.'

   Regulations to register as a monk have also been tightened.

   'There is more scrutiny of who is registering to be a monk and more scrutiny of sermons to make sure they aren't tinged with a political agenda,' said David Mathieson, Myanmar expert for Human Rights Watch.

   The report was released on the anniversary of the September 22, 2007, demonstration, in which thousands of barefoot monks marched into Yangon in a peaceful protest against decades of military rule and deteriorating economic conditions in the country of 54 million.

   The demonstration raised hopes that Myanmar was finally being pushed toward political change because the junta would be afraid to crack down on the country's revered Buddhist monks. That optimism proved unfounded.

   'The hopes that everyone had that this would carve out greater freedom in Burma were crushed five days later when the military started shooting, beating and arresting hundreds of Buddhist monks,' Mathieson said.

   At least 31 deaths were confirmed by the United Nations in the crackdown although other organizations estimated much higher casualties. Hundreds of monks and their followers were arrested. Thousands were disrobed and forced out of the monkhood.

   As of last month, there were 237 monks in Myanmar jails and another 35 nuns, the Human Rights Watch report said.

   The report was researched and written by Lintner, a well-known Myanmar expert who has spent a lifetime reporting and writing books on the South-East Asian country.

   Lintner travelled to Malaysia, Sri Lanka, London and New York to interview monks who fled abroad after the 2007 protests and used other means to interview monks still inside Myanmar to find out what had happened to the monkhood over the past two years.

   Prior to the crackdown, there were an estimated 400,000 monks and about 45,000 nuns in a country where about 90 per cent of the population is Buddhist.

   Lintner argued that the monkhood has a long history of political activism in Myanmar and played a key role in the previous uprisings of 1974 and 1988.

   Monks' opposition in the 1940s to British colonialists for wearing shoes in Buddhist temples was 'the spark that ignited the national independence movement,' Lintner said.