Burma security forces sealed off Yangon’s Shwedagon Pagoda on Wednesday, fired tear gas and arrested up to 80 monks trying to get into the shrine, cracking down on the biggest anti-junta protests in nearly 20 years.
Witnesses said some of the deeply revered Buddhist clergy were beaten and manhandled by riot police taking them away from the shrine, the starting point for the past week’s monk-led protests against 45 years of military rule.
The atmosphere at the gilded shrine was ”very tense”, one witness said, with onlookers angry at the use of violence against the maroon-clad monks.
Troops and riot police also took up positions outside at least six big activist monasteries, a clear sign the generals were trying to prevent any attempt at a repeat of mass marches through Yangon and Mandalay, the second city.
Hundreds of soldiers waited in a park behind Yangon’s Sule Pagoda, the city-centre end point of the marches and scene of some of the worst bloodshed when troops opened fire on protesters in 1988, Burma’s last major uprising.
Then, as many as 3 000 people are thought to have been killed.
There was no immediate word from the monks on whether they would risk a major showdown with the military on Wednesday, the Buddhist holy day.
But compared to the same time on Monday and Tuesday, the number of monks in and around the Shwedagon was small.
Witnesses said some monks were inside the pagoda, the country’s holiest shrine, whose gates were locked or blocked with wooden barricades.
”This is a test of wills between the only two institutions in the country that have enough power to mobilise nationally,” said Bradley Babson, a retired World Bank official who worked in Burma.
”Between those two institutions, one of them will crack,” he said. ”If they take overt violence against the monks, they risk igniting the population against them.”
Activists arrested
The junta waited until demonstrators had left on Tuesday to move soldiers and riot police into the area.
It also waited late into the evening, when most people in Yangon and Mandalay had gone home, to send loudspeaker trucks into the streets to announce a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
It appeared the generals did not use radio and television because they have only national networks and on Wednesday morning few outside the two main cities were aware curfews had been imposed.
But they picked up at least two activists overnight, relatives said.
Prominent comedian Za Ga Na, who had joined the monks on Monday in urging people to support the protests, was arrested at his home in Yangon along with activist Win Naing, relatives said.
In another move against monks, whose leadership on Monday was told to rein them in or face military force, a bus owner said drivers had been ordered not to pick up monks.
The escalating tension in the South-east Asian gripped the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York, where world leaders — mindful of the 1988 violence — called on the junta to exercise restraint.
US President George Bush, in a speech to the assembly, called on all countries to ”help the Burmese people reclaim their freedom” and announced fresh sanctions against the generals, their supporters and families.
The 27-nation European Union said it would ”reinforce and strengthen” sanctions against Burma’s rulers if the demonstrations were put down by force. – Reuters