http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/world/asia/21myanmar.html?ref=asia Myanmar, for the third day on Thursday. They were joined at times by other residents of this former capital. In a gesture of protest, at least some monks reportedly refused to accept alms from members of the military.
They prayed at the gold-spired Shwedagon Pagoda, the nation’s holiest shrine, then wound through the streets of the city, Yangon, before disbanding in late afternoon and announcing that they would march again, wire services reported.
The involvement of large numbers of monks has increased the challenge to the government in a nation where the Buddhist clergy is highly revered and is the most organized group apart from the military.
The current protests began after the government raised fuel prices on Aug. 15 without warning or explanation by as much as 500 percent.
At first, former student leaders and democracy advocates took the lead. But most have been arrested or are in hiding, and the protests appeared to be waning before the monks and monasteries became involved.
“The involvement of the monks is a significant escalation,” said David Steinberg, an expert on Myanmar at Georgetown University. “It shows that the frustration has increased, a political frustration as well as an economic frustration.”
Protests by monks have been reported in a number of other cities over the past three days. If the monks’ demonstrations continue, analysts said, the military junta will face a difficult decision over whether to crush them by force and risk a still greater public backlash.
According to reports from the scene, nearly 1,000 monks in their rust-red robes were joined yesterday by thousands of people who walked alongside them in the greatest sign of public participation since the protests began on Aug. 19.
Some onlookers offered snacks and drinks to the marchers and some bowed their heads and raised their clasped palms in a gesture of prayer, The Associated Press reported.
At least some monks were reportedly refusing to accept alms from members of the military, a refusal, known as “turning over the rice bowl,” that amounts to an ad-hoc gesture of excommunication. The A.P. reported that one monk at the head of the procession held a begging bowl upside down as he marched.
The Asian Human Rights Commission, an independent group based in Hong Kong, released what it said was a transcript of a public statement by monks in Yangon yesterday.
After condemning abuses of monks by the junta, the statement declares: “The clergy boycotts the violent, mean, cruel, ruthless, pitiless kings, the great thieves who live by stealing from the national treasury. The clergy hereby also refuses donations and preaching.”
Mr. Steinberg said the demonstrations appeared to involve younger monks rather than the hierarchy of the country’s religious establishment.
Monks have been at the forefront of protests in Myanmar since colonial times, before the country, then known as Burma, won independence from Britain in 1948. They were prominent, along with students, in the nationwide uprising of 1988 that was crushed by the military with the loss of thousands of lives.
In 1990, in a smaller failed uprising, thousands of monks joined demonstrations and refused to perform religious rites for soldiers or their families. Many hundreds were reportedly detained.
This time the junta has appeared reluctant to use force. The protests come at a time when Myanmar is trying to present itself to the world as a democratizing nation, with the adoption early this month of new constitutional guidelines.
The technology of rapid communication is spreading film and photographs of the demonstrations both within and outside the country, and the junta can no longer operate in the shadows as it did in the past. Two weeks ago, however, soldiers reportedly manhandled a group of protesting monks in Pakokku, near central Mandalay, and fired several shots into the air.
In response, some monks briefly kidnapped a group of officials at a monastery and vandalized buildings belonging to members of the government. The confrontation in Pakokku has apparently helped fuel the larger demonstrations that have taken place this week. They began after the government failed to offer an apology demanded by the Buddhist clergy.
Officials have mostly stood back as columns of barefoot monks paraded quickly through the streets this week. Plainclothes police officers and members of a government-backed vigilante force known as the Union Solidarity and Development Association have monitored the monks, filming and photographing them.
On Wednesday, the monks in Yangon were barred from entering the Shwedagon Pagoda and marched instead to the Sule Pagoda in the heart of the city, which they occupied briefly. On Tuesday, when 1,000 monks demonstrated in several cities, security officials reportedly used tear gas and fired warning shots to disperse monks in Sittwe, west of Yangon. According to reports received by exile groups in Thailand, some monks were beaten and arrested.
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