Burma Update

1. UN council presses Burma on human rights
2. Burma quietly releases 96 monks
3. Monks expelled from Sangha University
4. Abbot jailed for government defamation
5. U.N. human rights body backs new probe of Myanmar
6. Spies, suspicion and empty monasteries, Burma today
7. Buddha's irresistible maroon army
8. Spies, suspicion and empty monasteries, Burma today
9. Anti-junta graffiti in Arakan
10. Silent but defiant
11. The role of Buddhism in the wake of the crackdown
12. State Militias given riot control training
13. The season of forced labor
14. Human trafficking a growing problem
15. How the Generals motor their way to millions

UN council presses Burma on human rights
BangkokPost: 15 Dec.07

Geneva (dpa) - The UN Human Rights Council agreed to send their special rapporteur back to Burma Friday to maintain pressure on the authorities over human rights and freedom of expression.

The Council, concluding its sixth session in Geneva, also voted to keep the post of special rapporteur to Sudan for another year, while disbanding the group of experts who were assigned to carry out a mission to the country in February.

They had accused the government of complicity in killings and rapes carried out by militia in Darfur.

The 47-strong member council agreed to end the group's mandate but retain the country-specific rapporteur despite pressure from African group members to do away with the role completely.

The Council president, the Romanian ambassador Doru Romulus Costea told a press conference: "There have been positive developments at the level of the Sudanese authorities" but he added there had also been delays and actions proposed by the Council's experts had not been implemented or acted on for a variety of reasons.

The Council also agreed that the special rapporteur, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro should return to Burma for a second visit in a resolution drawn up by the EU group of countries. The council hoped he would visit as soon as possible and report back to the next scheduled session in March.

The resolution also called on the authorities to free any prisoners still detained following the military crackdown on the peaceful protests led by hundreds of monks in September.

Pinheiro visited the country in November. The Council president said that he had been allowed to visit in the first place was "a positive step but not sufficient."

Burma quietly releases 96 monks
The Nation: Mon 17 Dec 2007

Rangoon - Burma's military regime has recently released from detention 96 monks who participated in September's marches, permitting half of them to return to the Ngwekyaryan monastery in Rangoon, sources said Monday.

Authorities released the 96 monks, including Abbot Sayadaw U Yevada, last Friday from the Kaba Aye detention centre, where they had been kept since the government crackdown on monk-led protests on September 26-27.

Some 50 monks were permitted to return to the Ngwekyaryan monastery in Rangoon, but the other 46 were ordered to leave the city, said sources who visited the monastery over the weekend.

Burma's monkhood, which has a long history of political activism, took the lead in organizing peaceful protests against drastic fuel hikes announced August 15 and the country's deteriorating economic conditions.

The demonstrations culminated in ten-of-thousands taking to the streets of Rangoon in increasingly aggressive protests against the military, which has ruled the country for the past 45 years.

The junta finally cracked down on September 26-27 with batons and bullets, killing at least 15 people and imprisoning more than 3,000.

The actual death toll and the number of people still in prison remains a mystery in Burma. At a government press conference on December 3 in Naypyitaw, the new administrative capital, Burma police chief Khin Yi claimed only 21 monks and 59 laymen remain in Burma jails on charges related to the protests.

Abbot Gambira, one of the top leaders of the monks' movement, was recently sentenced to life imprisonment, according to a retired religious affairs ministry official who asked to remain anonymous.

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2007/12/17/regional/regional_30059304.php

Monks expelled from Sangha University – Wai Moe
Irrawaddy: Mon 17 Dec 2007

Twenty five monks from a Rangoon Buddhist university, including a number of junior tutors, have been expelled from the campus, according to reliable sources.

The authorities told the expelled monks to leave the campus of Kaba Aye Sangha University and return to their home monasteries, the sources said on Monday. The monks were told they were being expelled because of their participation in the September demonstrations.

Ninety six monks arrested during and after the demonstrations were released from custody on Friday. Half were from Nywekyaryan Monastery, in South Okkalapa, Rangoon. including the abbot, U Yeveda.

UN Human Rights Rapporteur Paulo Sergio Pinheiro visited Nywekyaryan Monastery during his November trip to Burma and reported that he found it empty of monks.

The Nywekyaryan Monastery was raided by security forces on September 26, and all the monks were arrested. Many were beaten and abused.

A school run by the monastery for children from poor families, the Pyanya Dana School, had to close because of the raid.

Nywekyaryan's deputy abbot, U Ottama, was released from custody on December 14 and returned to the monastery.

The monks freed on Friday had been held at the Kaba Aye detention centre. Others are still imprisoned in Rangoon's Insein Prison. Some, including a leading monk in the uprising, U Gambira, have been charged with high treason, said a Rangoon monk.

Abbot jailed for government defamation – Moe Aye
Democratic Voice of Burma: Mon 17 Dec 2007

The abbot of Zantila Rama monastery has been sentenced to two years' imprisonment for defamation after complaining about the seizure of money from the monastery during a raid.

Zantila Rama monastery in South Okkalapa township, Rangoon, was raided by government security forces in early October.

Officials seized 4.2 million kyat that belonged to the monastery during the raid, according to a lay supporter of the abbot.

U Zantila, the monastery's abbot, wrote a letter of complaint about the incident to the minister of home affairs, minister of religious affairs and State Peace and Development Council chairman.

The abbot was arrested at the monastery by security forces a few days after he sent the letter and was charged with defaming the government.

He was disrobed and given a two-year prison sentence at the end of November.

The lay supporter was angered by the prison term, and is now trying to find out the names of the officials involved in the raid.

He plans to take his complaints further and bring the case to the attention of international Buddhist organisations.

U.N. human rights body backs new probe of Myanmar – Laura MacInnis
Reuters: Mon 17 Dec 2007

The U.N. Human Rights Council told Myanmar on Friday to prosecute those who committed abuses during a crackdown on peaceful monk-led protests and free Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and all other political prisoners.

In a resolution adopted by consensus, the United Nations forum called on the ruling junta "to lift all restraints on the peaceful political activity of all persons" and "to release without delay those arrested and detained as a result of the repression of recent peaceful protests."

The 47-member-state Council said its special envoy for Myanmar, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, should revisit the country and report back in March on the fall-out from the September suppression that captured international attention.

Myanmar criticized the resolution, backed by 41 countries including Britain, Germany, Canada and Korea, as "politicized."

"This clearly shows that Myanmar has been put under pressure by influential and powerful countries who have their own political agenda," Wunna Maung Lwin, Myanmar's ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, told the Friday session.

Human rights groups welcomed the censure by the Council.

"This is a very positive thing," Juliette de Rivero of Human Rights Watch told a news briefing in Geneva. She said it was important for Pinheiro to return to the country "to do a more in-depth investigation of violations he has already identified."

Amnesty International said a second and longer visit to Myanmar could help Pinheiro carry out a full investigation of the circumstances before and during the crackdown, as well as reported abuses against ethnic minorities there.

EXCESSIVE FORCE

In a report presented to the Council this week, denounced by Myanmar as "intrusive" and "misleading," Pinheiro said excessive force was used to quell the demonstrations, triggered by a 500 percent oil price rise in the former Burma.

The Brazilian professor, who visited Myanmar in November, said at least 31 people died and up to 4,000 were arrested in the clashes in which troops and riot police used tear gas, live ammunition, rubber bullets, smoke grenades and slingshots.

Pinheiro also reported accounts of bodies — including those apparently of monks — burned in suspicious circumstances during the crackdown, possibly in order to hide the total death toll.

Lwin said the independent envoy's report was based on unreliable sources, and flatly denied Pinheiro's suggestion that 1,000 people arrested during and after the clashes were still being detained, some in extremely difficult circumstances.

"We have been able to restore peace and stability and the situation is back to normalcy all over the country," he said.

Myanmar has repeatedly ignored calls for the release of Suu Kyi, whose opposition party won an election in 1990 by a landslide but was denied power by the military, which has ruled Myanmar since a 1962 coup. She has been detained for 12 of the last 18 years and many of her supporters have also been jailed.

Spies, suspicion and empty monasteries, Burma today – Chris McGreal
The Guardian UK: Mon 17 Dec 2007

The security policemen who snatched the young shop owner from his bed and hauled him off to the bare interrogation room of Mandalay's police station No 14 really had only one question - and just one answer - in mind.

But the interrogators had an array of techniques to extract the "confession" they wanted to hear from him and the thousands of others scattered in jails across Burma; an admission that the pro-democracy demonstrations led by thousands of monks that shook the country's paranoid military government in September were really a foreign-backed political plot to bring down the regime.

"I was sitting on the floor of the interrogation room," said the man, an art shop owner in his 20s. "There were five of them asking questions. The first day I was beaten very hard and they asked: who organised the monks? I told them we were following the monks, respecting the Buddha, they weren't following us."

"I was interrogated all night for three nights. They kicked and punched me on the side of my head with their fists. They asked me the same question over and over. I told them: you can ask anything, my answer will always be the same. I don't know who organised the monks. They didn't like that answer."

So the interrogators forced the young man to half-crouch as though he were sitting on a motorbike, made him put his arms out as if gripping the handlebars and demanded he imitate an engine, loudly.

The initial humiliation gave way to intense pains in his legs, arms and throat after several hours. When he fell over he was beaten again. He was held for a month and is still not sure why he was detained. He suspects the police identified him from photographs of civilians who marched with the monks. But he was not alone in the cells of police station No 14.

Thousands of civilians have emerged from weeks in prison following the protests with accounts of brutal torture aimed at extracting "confessions" and at terrorising a new generation of Burmese into acquiescing to military rule.

Crackdown

From Rangoon to Mandalay and down the Irrawaddy river to the small town of Pakokku, demonstrators and politicians were rounded up in the crackdown against the greatest challenge to the 400,000-strong army's hegemony in a generation. Scores were killed, including monks.

At the same time, hundreds of monasteries were purged of monks. Some were arrested and tortured but mostly they were driven back to their villages to prevent more protests which began over price rises but evolved into demands for an end to 45 years of military rule.

What remains is a climate of terror in an already fearful land where anyone who took part in the protests lives in dread of being identified. Even the monks are suspicious of each other, believing the regime has planted spies and agents provocateurs or coerced some into becoming informers.

But the military has not emerged unscathed from its confrontation with the monasteries. There are divisions over the brutal treatment of the monks, and accounts that soldiers are fearful of the spiritual price they might pay.

The monks of Pakokku are wary of unknown faces. Their monasteries were among the first to be purged after the small town and seat of Buddhist learning, about six hours downriver from Mandalay, became the crucible of the demonstrations that spread nationwide.

Behind closed doors inside the largest of Pakokku's monasteries, the Bawdimandine, two monks describe a confrontation with the army that on the face of it the monks have lost, but which the Buddhist clergy believe marks the beginning of the downfall of the regime - although none of them are predicting that it will happen any time soon.

"All the monks here are very much against the government," said one. "They're still against the government mentally but not physically because we can't do anything. If we do they will arrest us. We don't want to kill. We don't want to torture. The government takes advantage of this. The government suppressed the protests but there's not really quiet. There's a lot of defiance."

The protests began in August over fuel and food price rises but escalated in September after the army broke up a demonstration in Pakokku by shooting dead one monk and lashing others to electricity poles and beating them with rifle butts. Pakokku's monks demanded an apology from the junta and the reversal of price rises.

But they added two overtly political demands - for the release of the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, from house arrest and the start of a dialogue to end military rule - that changed the character of the confrontation.

When the deadline passed, monasteries across Burma took up the cause and poured tens of thousands of monks on to the streets in days of marches that initially left the military paralysed. But the crackdown soon came. In some cases it took no more than the threat of mass arrests to empty a monastery. Lorryloads of troops herded the clergy away from others.

Fear of arrest

Almost half of the 1,200 monks at the Bawdimandine monastery fled. Those who remain say they are afraid to venture on to the streets for fear of arrest.

"Things have changed for us," said one monk. "The soldiers used to drag the civilians off the buses to check their identity cards and leave the monks in their seats. Now it is the monks they line up in the road to check and they leave the civilians on the bus."

It is a similar story in monasteries from the former capital, Rangoon, to Mandalay where 20,000 monks and their supporters turned out on the streets of Burma's second city and religious heartland to challenge the military regime.

The purges continue despite the government's assurances to the United Nations. "The government has many spies among the monks," said one of the chief monks of the Old Ma Soe monastery in Mandalay.

"During the demonstrations they pulled the prisoners out of Mandalay jail and shaved their heads and put them among the monks to cause trouble. The bogus monks were chanting aggressively. They are still trying to send spies. When we have a new monk we do not know we test their knowledge of Buddhist literature. If they don't know we send them away."

In some monasteries, the monks were given time to pack up and get out. But in others, they fled without notice, leaving neatly made beds, books lining the shelves of their cubicles and the single key that each monk is permitted to possess. Cats and dogs wander the prayer halls.

Ask where the monks are and those that remain say they went back to their villages. What has happened to them there? Some were arrested but most have been left alone, provided they do not try to return to their monasteries, according to the leading clerics. "It was all about silencing them," said the monk at Old Ma Soe.

Fear is pervasive in Burma. There are not many soldiers on the streets but the regime has many ordinary people believing that their every move is being watched and that anyone might be an informer. .

The fear is underpinned by the sheer numbers of men who have been through the regime's jails at some time or another, even if only for a few weeks.

The 1988 generation of protesters remembers the slaughter of 3,000 of their number as the regime quashed the demonstrations and the mass arrests afterwards.The latest crackdown has introduced a new generation to the regime's use of terror against its own population.

"There were 85 others in my police cell, mostly young people," said the young shopkeeper held in police station No 14. "Some were only 15 or 16 years old. One boy told me he was arrested for wearing an American flag on his head. Some of the students had broken bones and head wounds.

"At the end of three days I still hadn't confessed so they gave up and put me back in the cell and left me alone. Some of the others confessed under the pressure but they weren't real confessions. I don't blame them. There were people in my cell who were interrogated non-stop for 15 days."

Among those detained were politicians from Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) elected in the annulled 1990 parliamentary election.

Last week, the government called diplomats to the new capital, Naypyidaw, to lay out the results of all these interrogations. The military said it had uncovered a longstanding plot involving "bogus monks", a little-known exile group, the Forum for Democracy in Burma, and billionaire financier George Soros's Open Society organisation to bring down the regime.

The junta outlined a complex conspiracy to infiltrate the monasteries, the labour force and universities in an 18-page document filled with scores of names of alleged plotters and their backers. Among others, it names U Gambira, the 27-year-old leader of the All Burma Monks Alliance, who is presently locked up in Mandalay prison. The government accuses him and opposition politicians of using ordinary monks as a front for political ends.

Foreign diplomats who have spoken to senior army officers since the protests say the regime is blind to the growing discontent at deepening economic hardship that underpinned the demonstrations.

The government maintains the illusion that Burma's economy is growing faster than China's even though the World Bank has rubbished statistics that claim to show double-digit growth. The reality can be seen in the contrasts with the booming economies of much of the rest of south-east Asia - Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia - particularly outside Rangoon. There's hardly a new vehicle to be seen besides scooters and Chinese-made motorbikes. The principal means of transport is old, underpowered buses and horse and trap. Ploughs are pulled by cattle.

There is such a shortage of cars that 25-year-old vehicles worth a few hundred pounds across the border cost £10,000 in Burma. A Sim card for the government-run mobile phone network, the only one there is, costs about £1,000.

Aside from a sprinkling of new hotels, there are few modern buildings to be seen beyond Rangoon and the surreal new capital, Naypyidaw. Life expectancy is well short of that in Burma's neighbours.

The chief United Nations representative, Charles Petrie, left Rangoon last week after being expelled for a speech in which he observed that Burma's per capita gross domestic product was less than half that of Cambodia or Bangladesh, and that the recent protests "clearly demonstrated the everyday struggle to meet basic needs. The average household is forced to spend almost three-quarters of its budget on food. One in three children under five are suffering malnutrition, and less than 50% of children are able to complete their primary education".

Military elite

That is not the world the generals live in. They are cocooned in the new capital or Pyin U Lwin, an army town 90 minutes' drive north of Mandalay. It is home to the military's main barracks and the Defence Services Academy training base. The grand, red-tiled entrance proclaims in gold lettering that its officers are the Triumphant Elite of the Future.

Two new and vast mansions sit on distant hilltops, and a neighbourhood of spacious, colonial-style homes is spreading in all directions, all apparently reserved for the military elite.

Few outsiders penetrate this closed world where career officers and their families live mostly cut off from the rest of Burma. Inside that world, the junta portrays itself as all that stands between order and disintegration into ethnic conflict. It says it is committed to a roadmap to a "disciplined flourishing democracy" that will lead to a "golden land in future".

But it has taken 14 years to complete the first two stages of the map which means that at the present rate of progress the end of the road will not be reached until well into the second half of the century.

The military's view that it is central to Burma's very survival is displayed on the front of all the heavily censored newspapers, where each day appear the 12 "political, economic and social objectives" of the military government. These include "uplift of the morale and morality of the entire nation" and "uplift of dynamism of patriotic spirit".

A senior monk who teaches at Pyin U Lwin's military academy said there was disquiet among some soldiers over the assault on the monks. "Soldiers are telling their relatives not to go into the army. Many soldiers are unhappy with what has happened. Some of them are my pupils. Even some of the colonels tell me they don't agree with what has happened," he said.

"We are educating the new generation about what is right and what is wrong. Evolution is better than revolution. We have no weapons. They have the weapons. All we have is loving kindness. Who wants to be killed? People are very peaceful, very passive. No one wants to die, no one wants to kill. They are not like the Muslims. You never heard of Myanmar people suicide bombing. But it will not be quick. Maybe another 10 years."

Many people in Burma are patient, but not that patient. The frustration and sense of helplessness is reflected in the self-delusion among some that the United Nations will invade and overthrow the regime.

Others draw strength from the widespread practice of interpreting what are seen as auspicious signs. Near Bagan a small pagoda has become the site of pilgrimage after a colony of bees settled on the face and chest of a Buddha. Bees are considered particularly auspicious and their choice of a Buddha has been widely interpreted as siding with monks.

Sitting atop a centuries-old pagoda nearby, a politician who has gone into hiding said many Burmese drew strength from the belief that the military leaders will pay for their crimes in the next life.

"They will have an amazing surprise in their afterlife. By killing monks they will come back as dogs who eat shit with many diseases, not the ones that eat good food and look nice; ugly dogs," he said. There are not many who would dare say such things openly but Thet Pyin is among them. The army first threw him into prison 45 years ago for his opposition to its rule.

"The problem the government has created for itself is that the conflict is no longer between the government and the people, it's between religion and the government. That's important because 80% of the population is Buddhist and the government is Buddhist. All the army is Buddhist. That will be its downfall," he said.

Occupation

"I'm 81 years old. I've never in all my life seen as bad a government as this, as unqualified as this. Even the Japanese occupation was not as bad as this. These military people don't have a clue what they are doing and their treatment of the monks is the latest evidence of that."

Pyin, a member of a small party that won three seats in the annulled 1990 election, said that the army duped people back then with promises of democracy but that it will not be able to get away with that again.

"This regime managed to pacify people after the 1988 demonstrations with promises of multiparty elections and an open economy and that the military would return to the barracks. The army reneged on that but it was forced to make the promise. The regime is going to have to do something to pacify the people again but they will not believe its promises now," he said.

"There are divisions in the army. The core of the dictatorship is small, it is at odds with the military in its larger role. This government will fall."

Burma's most renowned female writer, Ludu Daw Ahmar, is also outspoken against the regime. Arrested in 1978 at the age of 63 on suspicion of links to the Communist party, which she denies, Ahmar spent a year in Mandalay jail. She has just celebrated her 92nd birthday and no longer fears what the regime might do to her. Frail and hard of hearing, she remains vigorously defiant.

"People are very much afraid of the government but this can't go on forever. There will be a day when the people break this," she said. "People will have to sacrifice their lives. There is no choice. We can't go on like this. We must get arms to resist them. I can't say how, but the people must find arms."

That is not the view of most Burmese, or the monks who have taken up a low-key but symbolically significant protest against the regime by refusing alms from the government. Some monks turn their bowls upside down when offered food by soldiers, interpreted as a form of excommunication.

At the Old Ma Soe monastery the monks refused to invite government representatives to celebrations to mark its 100th anniversary.

The clerics have also declared a boycott of government exams they are expected to take every year. But the monasteries hold their own exams in April, and some senior clerics are predicting that will mark the beginning of a new campaign of protest.

"The monasteries will be full again. They will not be silent. No one has changed their mind about this government," said a senior cleric in Mandalay. "But we know it will not change tomorrow. It might take five years, it might take 10, but it will be go. It has no solutions."

Atop the pagoda near Bagan, the political activist who is now in hiding said the military was wrong to believe it has cowed another generation.

Burma is a resource-rich country but its economy is crippled by overbearing government control and ineffective policies. It is the world's biggest exporter of teak, a principal source of precious stones, has fertile soil and significant offshore oil and gas deposits but the majority of its people live in abject poverty. Steps in the early 1990s to liberalise the economy after decades of failure under the programme Burmese Way to Socialisation, a large-scale attempt at central economic planning, were largely unsuccessful. The US imposed fresh economic sanctions in August 2003 in response to the junta's attack on Aung San Suu Kyi and her convoy. A banking crisis in the same year saw hundreds of Burmese lining up outside banks to withdraw their savings after the government shut down several institutions. The average household spends three-quarters of its budget on food and one in three children under five are suffering malnutrition.

Buddha's irresistible maroon army – Michael W. Charney
Times of London Online: Mon 17 Dec 2007

The military junta in Burma came under fierce pressure from the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, and from the White House, in the unusual guise of Laura Bush this week. While the US First Lady was telling the generals to introduce democratic reforms or to step aside, the All-Burma Monks Alliance was agitating for a UN commission to establish how many monks were killed in the September protests and how many are still imprisoned.

The presence of monks in the anti-government marches may have confused those who assumed that Buddhist monks do not involve themselves in such secular affairs, but in fact the monastic role in Burmese politics goes back centuries.

Theravada Buddhism is primarily practised today in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. This school of Buddhism reached South-East Asia in the 11th century. Among the stories about its introduction is that of King Anawrahta (r. 1044-77) of the Kingdom of Pagan, who conquered the Kingdom of Thaton in the southeast corner of present-day Burma. He brought back to his capital of Pagan on the Irrawaddy River the three core collections of texts (the Tipitika) of the Pali Buddhist canon.

Thereafter Burmese courts patronised Theravada Buddhism. Villagers, however, continued to venerate local spirits, many of which were gradually absorbed into Buddhism via the work of monks in a landscape increasingly populated by monasteries. In time monks circulating between South-East Asia and Sri Lanka pursued greater reliance on orthodox texts and practices and urged the court to launch religious reforms based on them. The most complete reform of Buddhism in Burma was launched under King Bodawhpaya (r. 1782-1819). It established the main monastic sect in the country today, the Thudhamma monks. Most Buddhist kings in SouthEast Asia strove to uphold their responsibilities as dhamma-rajas (kings of the Buddhist law), in ensuring monastic unity and thus the wellbeing of Buddhism within their domains. They discouraged monks from involvement in mundane politics as stipulated by the rules of the Vinaya, the monastic code.

As most patronage came from these rulers, monks restricted themselves to studying Buddhist texts, meditating, and providing for the survival of the religion so that the populace could accrue merit through good works.

The role of monks changed as a result of the introduction of colonial rule in the 19th century. The British, unable to provide officials to locally administer villages, turned to the village headman. In the past the headman had worked for both the State and the villagers, collecting revenue, manpower and agricultural resources when the court required it and voicing complaints of villagers up through the hierarchy. The headman was thus an important intermediary who helped to ensure local social stability, protecting as much as administering. Under the British the headman became a paid agent of the State, who owed no obligations to the people under his charge. This removed the protection against state demands and the means for peacefully resolving local complaints. So the people turned to the only remaining pre-colonial institution, the monastery, and monks now came to provide community leadership.

Throughout British rule, but especially from the 1920s, the so-called "political monks" played an important role in mobilising opposition to colonial excesses and forcing the administration to pay closer attention to local complaints.

Even before British rule there had been a strong monastic contribution to Burmese secular intellectual life. Important late-18th-century monks, especially a clique from the Lower Chindwin River area in the northwest, played a key role in shaping the standard texts still influencing Burmese understandings of history today and introducing new strands of Indian thought into Burma. This intellectual vigour persisted under British rule. Shin Ottama, for example, introduced the anti-colonial thinking that emerged out of the Indian National Congress, as well as information on modernisation in Japan after the First World War.

Buddhist communalism also grew out of the fear that the combination of the British reluctance to patronise Buddhism, the introduction of thousands of immigrants, and the political incorporation of animist and Christian converts in the minority hill areas would challenge the place of Buddhism in Burmese society and as part of the Burmese national identity. Thus, monastic organisations pushed Burma's postwar nationalist leaders to make Buddhism the state religion. After independence this struggle continued until the legislation was finally passed in 1962. At about the same time the monastic order was mobilised in a nationwide anti-communist campaign.

Burma has been under military rule since 1962, formally or informally, and in this time the relationship between the State and monks has been tense. Attempts by the dictator General Ne Win in the 1960s and mid-1970s to bring Buddhism under tighter government regulation met fierce resistance. During the pro-democracy demonstrations that saw the rise of the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, monks were involved in anti-government protests.

Since 1988 the military has ruthlessly kept monastic involvement in politics to a minimum. So the role of the monks at the head of the recent protests in Burma took many, including the Government, by surprise. Predictably, the State's reaction was delayed but harsh when it finally came. Monks were defrocked, interrogated and beaten. The regime has since closed monastic colleges and sent member monks back to their respective villages.

Although it may appear that the State has successfully cowed the monks into submission, they have survived perhaps more serious episodes of state persecution in the past. Given their importance in Burmese society and their resilience in past periods of political turmoil, it would be foolish to assume that they will not rebound from current setbacks.

Dr Michael W. Charney teaches in the Department of History, SOAS

Spies, suspicion and empty monasteries, Burma today – Chris McGreal
The Guardian UK: Mon 17 Dec 2007

The security policemen who snatched the young shop owner from his bed and hauled him off to the bare interrogation room of Mandalay's police station No 14 really had only one question - and just one answer - in mind.

But the interrogators had an array of techniques to extract the "confession" they wanted to hear from him and the thousands of others scattered in jails across Burma; an admission that the pro-democracy demonstrations led by thousands of monks that shook the country's paranoid military government in September were really a foreign-backed political plot to bring down the regime.

"I was sitting on the floor of the interrogation room," said the man, an art shop owner in his 20s. "There were five of them asking questions. The first day I was beaten very hard and they asked: who organised the monks? I told them we were following the monks, respecting the Buddha, they weren't following us."

"I was interrogated all night for three nights. They kicked and punched me on the side of my head with their fists. They asked me the same question over and over. I told them: you can ask anything, my answer will always be the same. I don't know who organised the monks. They didn't like that answer."

So the interrogators forced the young man to half-crouch as though he were sitting on a motorbike, made him put his arms out as if gripping the handlebars and demanded he imitate an engine, loudly.

The initial humiliation gave way to intense pains in his legs, arms and throat after several hours. When he fell over he was beaten again. He was held for a month and is still not sure why he was detained. He suspects the police identified him from photographs of civilians who marched with the monks. But he was not alone in the cells of police station No 14.

Thousands of civilians have emerged from weeks in prison following the protests with accounts of brutal torture aimed at extracting "confessions" and at terrorising a new generation of Burmese into acquiescing to military rule.

Crackdown

From Rangoon to Mandalay and down the Irrawaddy river to the small town of Pakokku, demonstrators and politicians were rounded up in the crackdown against the greatest challenge to the 400,000-strong army's hegemony in a generation. Scores were killed, including monks.

At the same time, hundreds of monasteries were purged of monks. Some were arrested and tortured but mostly they were driven back to their villages to prevent more protests which began over price rises but evolved into demands for an end to 45 years of military rule.

What remains is a climate of terror in an already fearful land where anyone who took part in the protests lives in dread of being identified. Even the monks are suspicious of each other, believing the regime has planted spies and agents provocateurs or coerced some into becoming informers.

But the military has not emerged unscathed from its confrontation with the monasteries. There are divisions over the brutal treatment of the monks, and accounts that soldiers are fearful of the spiritual price they might pay.

The monks of Pakokku are wary of unknown faces. Their monasteries were among the first to be purged after the small town and seat of Buddhist learning, about six hours downriver from Mandalay, became the crucible of the demonstrations that spread nationwide.

Behind closed doors inside the largest of Pakokku's monasteries, the Bawdimandine, two monks describe a confrontation with the army that on the face of it the monks have lost, but which the Buddhist clergy believe marks the beginning of the downfall of the regime - although none of them are predicting that it will happen any time soon.

"All the monks here are very much against the government," said one. "They're still against the government mentally but not physically because we can't do anything. If we do they will arrest us. We don't want to kill. We don't want to torture. The government takes advantage of this. The government suppressed the protests but there's not really quiet. There's a lot of defiance."

The protests began in August over fuel and food price rises but escalated in September after the army broke up a demonstration in Pakokku by shooting dead one monk and lashing others to electricity poles and beating them with rifle butts. Pakokku's monks demanded an apology from the junta and the reversal of price rises.

But they added two overtly political demands - for the release of the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, from house arrest and the start of a dialogue to end military rule - that changed the character of the confrontation.

When the deadline passed, monasteries across Burma took up the cause and poured tens of thousands of monks on to the streets in days of marches that initially left the military paralysed. But the crackdown soon came. In some cases it took no more than the threat of mass arrests to empty a monastery. Lorryloads of troops herded the clergy away from others.

Fear of arrest

Almost half of the 1,200 monks at the Bawdimandine monastery fled. Those who remain say they are afraid to venture on to the streets for fear of arrest.

"Things have changed for us," said one monk. "The soldiers used to drag the civilians off the buses to check their identity cards and leave the monks in their seats. Now it is the monks they line up in the road to check and they leave the civilians on the bus."

It is a similar story in monasteries from the former capital, Rangoon, to Mandalay where 20,000 monks and their supporters turned out on the streets of Burma's second city and religious heartland to challenge the military regime.

The purges continue despite the government's assurances to the United Nations. "The government has many spies among the monks," said one of the chief monks of the Old Ma Soe monastery in Mandalay.

"During the demonstrations they pulled the prisoners out of Mandalay jail and shaved their heads and put them among the monks to cause trouble. The bogus monks were chanting aggressively. They are still trying to send spies. When we have a new monk we do not know we test their knowledge of Buddhist literature. If they don't know we send them away."

In some monasteries, the monks were given time to pack up and get out. But in others, they fled without notice, leaving neatly made beds, books lining the shelves of their cubicles and the single key that each monk is permitted to possess. Cats and dogs wander the prayer halls.

Ask where the monks are and those that remain say they went back to their villages. What has happened to them there? Some were arrested but most have been left alone, provided they do not try to return to their monasteries, according to the leading clerics. "It was all about silencing them," said the monk at Old Ma Soe.

Fear is pervasive in Burma. There are not many soldiers on the streets but the regime has many ordinary people believing that their every move is being watched and that anyone might be an informer. .

The fear is underpinned by the sheer numbers of men who have been through the regime's jails at some time or another, even if only for a few weeks.

The 1988 generation of protesters remembers the slaughter of 3,000 of their number as the regime quashed the demonstrations and the mass arrests afterwards.The latest crackdown has introduced a new generation to the regime's use of terror against its own population.

"There were 85 others in my police cell, mostly young people," said the young shopkeeper held in police station No 14. "Some were only 15 or 16 years old. One boy told me he was arrested for wearing an American flag on his head. Some of the students had broken bones and head wounds.

"At the end of three days I still hadn't confessed so they gave up and put me back in the cell and left me alone. Some of the others confessed under the pressure but they weren't real confessions. I don't blame them. There were people in my cell who were interrogated non-stop for 15 days."

Among those detained were politicians from Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) elected in the annulled 1990 parliamentary election.

Last week, the government called diplomats to the new capital, Naypyidaw, to lay out the results of all these interrogations. The military said it had uncovered a longstanding plot involving "bogus monks", a little-known exile group, the Forum for Democracy in Burma, and billionaire financier George Soros's Open Society organisation to bring down the regime.

The junta outlined a complex conspiracy to infiltrate the monasteries, the labour force and universities in an 18-page document filled with scores of names of alleged plotters and their backers. Among others, it names U Gambira, the 27-year-old leader of the All Burma Monks Alliance, who is presently locked up in Mandalay prison. The government accuses him and opposition politicians of using ordinary monks as a front for political ends.

Foreign diplomats who have spoken to senior army officers since the protests say the regime is blind to the growing discontent at deepening economic hardship that underpinned the demonstrations.

The government maintains the illusion that Burma's economy is growing faster than China's even though the World Bank has rubbished statistics that claim to show double-digit growth. The reality can be seen in the contrasts with the booming economies of much of the rest of south-east Asia - Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia - particularly outside Rangoon. There's hardly a new vehicle to be seen besides scooters and Chinese-made motorbikes. The principal means of transport is old, underpowered buses and horse and trap. Ploughs are pulled by cattle.

There is such a shortage of cars that 25-year-old vehicles worth a few hundred pounds across the border cost £10,000 in Burma. A Sim card for the government-run mobile phone network, the only one there is, costs about £1,000.

Aside from a sprinkling of new hotels, there are few modern buildings to be seen beyond Rangoon and the surreal new capital, Naypyidaw. Life expectancy is well short of that in Burma's neighbours.

The chief United Nations representative, Charles Petrie, left Rangoon last week after being expelled for a speech in which he observed that Burma's per capita gross domestic product was less than half that of Cambodia or Bangladesh, and that the recent protests "clearly demonstrated the everyday struggle to meet basic needs. The average household is forced to spend almost three-quarters of its budget on food. One in three children under five are suffering malnutrition, and less than 50% of children are able to complete their primary education".

Military elite

That is not the world the generals live in. They are cocooned in the new capital or Pyin U Lwin, an army town 90 minutes' drive north of Mandalay. It is home to the military's main barracks and the Defence Services Academy training base. The grand, red-tiled entrance proclaims in gold lettering that its officers are the Triumphant Elite of the Future.

Two new and vast mansions sit on distant hilltops, and a neighbourhood of spacious, colonial-style homes is spreading in all directions, all apparently reserved for the military elite.

Few outsiders penetrate this closed world where career officers and their families live mostly cut off from the rest of Burma. Inside that world, the junta portrays itself as all that stands between order and disintegration into ethnic conflict. It says it is committed to a roadmap to a "disciplined flourishing democracy" that will lead to a "golden land in future".

But it has taken 14 years to complete the first two stages of the map which means that at the present rate of progress the end of the road will not be reached until well into the second half of the century.

The military's view that it is central to Burma's very survival is displayed on the front of all the heavily censored newspapers, where each day appear the 12 "political, economic and social objectives" of the military government. These include "uplift of the morale and morality of the entire nation" and "uplift of dynamism of patriotic spirit".

A senior monk who teaches at Pyin U Lwin's military academy said there was disquiet among some soldiers over the assault on the monks. "Soldiers are telling their relatives not to go into the army. Many soldiers are unhappy with what has happened. Some of them are my pupils. Even some of the colonels tell me they don't agree with what has happened," he said.

"We are educating the new generation about what is right and what is wrong. Evolution is better than revolution. We have no weapons. They have the weapons. All we have is loving kindness. Who wants to be killed? People are very peaceful, very passive. No one wants to die, no one wants to kill. They are not like the Muslims. You never heard of Myanmar people suicide bombing. But it will not be quick. Maybe another 10 years."

Many people in Burma are patient, but not that patient. The frustration and sense of helplessness is reflected in the self-delusion among some that the United Nations will invade and overthrow the regime.

Others draw strength from the widespread practice of interpreting what are seen as auspicious signs. Near Bagan a small pagoda has become the site of pilgrimage after a colony of bees settled on the face and chest of a Buddha. Bees are considered particularly auspicious and their choice of a Buddha has been widely interpreted as siding with monks.

Sitting atop a centuries-old pagoda nearby, a politician who has gone into hiding said many Burmese drew strength from the belief that the military leaders will pay for their crimes in the next life.

"They will have an amazing surprise in their afterlife. By killing monks they will come back as dogs who eat shit with many diseases, not the ones that eat good food and look nice; ugly dogs," he said. There are not many who would dare say such things openly but Thet Pyin is among them. The army first threw him into prison 45 years ago for his opposition to its rule.

"The problem the government has created for itself is that the conflict is no longer between the government and the people, it's between religion and the government. That's important because 80% of the population is Buddhist and the government is Buddhist. All the army is Buddhist. That will be its downfall," he said.

Occupation

"I'm 81 years old. I've never in all my life seen as bad a government as this, as unqualified as this. Even the Japanese occupation was not as bad as this. These military people don't have a clue what they are doing and their treatment of the monks is the latest evidence of that."

Pyin, a member of a small party that won three seats in the annulled 1990 election, said that the army duped people back then with promises of democracy but that it will not be able to get away with that again.

"This regime managed to pacify people after the 1988 demonstrations with promises of multiparty elections and an open economy and that the military would return to the barracks. The army reneged on that but it was forced to make the promise. The regime is going to have to do something to pacify the people again but they will not believe its promises now," he said.

"There are divisions in the army. The core of the dictatorship is small, it is at odds with the military in its larger role. This government will fall."

Burma's most renowned female writer, Ludu Daw Ahmar, is also outspoken against the regime. Arrested in 1978 at the age of 63 on suspicion of links to the Communist party, which she denies, Ahmar spent a year in Mandalay jail. She has just celebrated her 92nd birthday and no longer fears what the regime might do to her. Frail and hard of hearing, she remains vigorously defiant.

"People are very much afraid of the government but this can't go on forever. There will be a day when the people break this," she said. "People will have to sacrifice their lives. There is no choice. We can't go on like this. We must get arms to resist them. I can't say how, but the people must find arms."

That is not the view of most Burmese, or the monks who have taken up a low-key but symbolically significant protest against the regime by refusing alms from the government. Some monks turn their bowls upside down when offered food by soldiers, interpreted as a form of excommunication.

At the Old Ma Soe monastery the monks refused to invite government representatives to celebrations to mark its 100th anniversary.

The clerics have also declared a boycott of government exams they are expected to take every year. But the monasteries hold their own exams in April, and some senior clerics are predicting that will mark the beginning of a new campaign of protest.

"The monasteries will be full again. They will not be silent. No one has changed their mind about this government," said a senior cleric in Mandalay. "But we know it will not change tomorrow. It might take five years, it might take 10, but it will be go. It has no solutions."

Atop the pagoda near Bagan, the political activist who is now in hiding said the military was wrong to believe it has cowed another generation.

"Nobody won in September because it's not finished," he said.

Resource-rich but with faltering economy

Burma is a resource-rich country but its economy is crippled by overbearing government control and ineffective policies. It is the world's biggest exporter of teak, a principal source of precious stones, has fertile soil and significant offshore oil and gas deposits but the majority of its people live in abject poverty. Steps in the early 1990s to liberalise the economy after decades of failure under the programme Burmese Way to Socialisation, a large-scale attempt at central economic planning, were largely unsuccessful. The US imposed fresh economic sanctions in August 2003 in response to the junta's attack on Aung San Suu Kyi and her convoy. A banking crisis in the same year saw hundreds of Burmese lining up outside banks to withdraw their savings after the government shut down several institutions. The average household spends three-quarters of its budget on food and one in three children under five are suffering malnutrition.

Anti-junta graffiti in Arakan
Narinjara News: Mon 17 Dec 2007

A number of anti-military junta statements were spray painted were spray painted on the streets of Taungup in southern Arakan State recently, said a teacher from the town.

"Many townspeople saw the red writing in the early morning of Thursday at several key places in our town, but we do not know who wrote them by spray painting," he said.

The unidentified spray painters had written statements in Burmese that translate as, "All people are living in a ready position because the battle against the military government will be restarted very soon," and "The power mad person Than Shwe must fall before 2008."

"Many walls and streets at the jetty, night market, cinema hall, hospital, bridges, and a crowded place called 'Nyung Pin Gri tree' were used by unknown persons to write against the military government," The teacher said.

The police in Taungup, however, cleaned the graffiti soon after they received information. Police reportedly spent at least two hours scrubbing the words from the streets and walls of the town.

Additionally, a number of anti-government posters and pamphlets were hung on walls and trees around town on the same day, in order to raise awareness about possible anti-government demonstrations in the future.

The anonymous dissidents wrote that if the Burmese military government does not change anything in regard to politics in Burma before 2008, they would stage demonstrations again by sacrificing their lives.

The teacher said the police are looking for evidence and clues about the anti-junta activists in Taungup, and most of the NLD members in the town are being targeted by police after the incident.

Taungup is a small town in Arakan State, but is very much against the military junta. During the monk-led demonstrations in September, nearly a dozen protests broke out in the town and about 20 people were arrested by the military authorities. Township NLD secretary Ko Min Aung was also sentenced to nine and-a-half years in prison for his involvement in the demonstrations there.

"The unity of people in Taungup is strong, and I hope the demonstrations will surface again in Taungup if the military government doesn't usher in democracy in 2008," the teacher said.

Silent but defiant
Guardian Unlimited: Fri 14 Dec 2007

The mass protests which shook Burma might have been crushed, but opponents of the military regime have not gone away, Chris McGreal discovers

The policemen who snatched the young shop owner from his bed and hauled him off to the bare interrogation room of Mandalay's police station number 14 really had only one question, and one answer, in mind.

But the interrogators had an array of techniques to extract the "confession" they wanted to hear from him and the thousands of others scattered in jails across Burma; an admission that the pro-democracy demonstrations led by thousands of monks that shook the country's paranoid military government in September were really a foreign-backed political plot to bring down the regime.

"I was sitting on the floor of the interrogation room," said the man, an art shop owner in his 20s.

"There were five of them asking questions. The first day I was beaten very hard and they asked: who organised the monks? I told them we were following the monks, respecting the Buddha, they weren't following us.

"I was interrogated all night for three nights. They kicked and punched me on the side of my head with their fists. They asked me the same question over and over. I told them: you can ask anything, my answer will always be the same. I don't know who organised the monks. They didn't like that answer."

So the interrogators forced the young man to half crouch as though he were sitting on a motorbike, made him put his arms out as if gripping the handlebars and demanded he imitate an engine, loudly.

The initial humiliation gave way to intense pains in his legs, arms and throat after several hours. When he fell over he was beaten again.

He was held for a month and is still not sure why he was detained. He suspects the police identified him from photographs of civilians who marched with the monks. But he was not alone in the cells of police station number 14.

Thousands of civilians have emerged from weeks in prison following the protests with accounts of brutal torture aimed at extracting "confessions" and terrorising a new generation of Burmese into acquiescing to military rule.

From Rangoon to Mandalay and down the Irrawaddy river to the small town of Pakokku, the crucible of the monks' protests, demonstrators and politicians were rounded up in the crackdown against what had been the greatest challenge to the 400,000-strong army's hegemony in a generation. Scores were killed, including monks.

At the same time, hundreds of monasteries were purged of monks. Some were arrested and tortured but mostly they were driven back to their villages to prevent more protests.

What remains is a climate of terror in an already fearful land where anyone who took part in the protests lives in dread of being identified.

Even the monks are suspicious of each other, believing that the regime has planted spies and agent provocateurs among them or coerced some into becoming informers.

But the military has not emerged unscathed from its confrontation with the monasteries.

There are divisions in the army over the brutal treatment of the monks, and accounts that ordinary soldiers are themselves fearful of the spiritual price they might pay.

The monks of Pakokku are wary of unknown faces. Their monasteries were among the first to be purged after the small town and seat of Buddhist learning, about six hours downriver from Mandalay, became the centrepoint of the demonstrations that spread nationwide.

Behind closed doors inside the largest of Pakokku's monasteries, the Bawdimandine, two monks described a confrontation with the army that on the face of it the monks have lost, but which the Buddhist clergy believe marks the beginning of the downfall of the regime - although none of them were predicting that it would happen any time soon.

"All the monks here are very much against the government," said one.

"They're still against the government mentally but not physically because we can't do anything. If we do they will arrest us. We don't want to kill. We don't want to torture. The government takes advantage of this. The government suppressed the protests but there's not really quiet. There's a lot of defiance".

The protests began in August over fuel and food price rises but escalated the following month after the army broke up a demonstration in Pakokku by shooting dead one monk and lashing others to electricity poles and beating them with rifle butts.

Pakokku's monks demanded an apology from the junta and the reversal of price rises. But they added two overtly political demands - the release of the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, from house arrest and the start of a dialogue to end 45 years of military rule. This changed the character of the confrontation.

When the deadline passed, monasteries across Burma took up the cause and sent tens of thousands of monks onto the streets in days of marches that initially left the military paralysed.

But the crackdown soon came. In some cases it took no more than the threat of mass arrests to empty a monastery. At others, lorry loads of troops herded the clergy away.

Almost half of the 1,200 monks at the Bawdimandine monastery fled. Those who remain say they are afraid to venture out on to the streets for fear of arrest.

"Things have changed for us," said one monk. "The soldiers used to drag the civilians off the buses to check their identity cards and leave the monks in their seats. Now it is the monks they line up in the road to check and they leave the civilians on the bus."

It is a similar story in monasteries from the former capital, Yangon, to Mandalay where 20,000 monks and their supporters turned out on the streets of Burma's second city and religious heartland to challenge the military regime.

The purges continue despite the government's assurances to the United Nations.

Just before World Aids Day on December 1, the military sealed the Maggan monastery in Yangon, which serves as a hospice for HIV/Aids patients. All were expelled. Maggan's chief abbot was already in detention.

"The government has many spies among the monks," said one of the chief monks of the Old Ma Soe monastery in Mandalay. "During the demonstrations they pulled the prisoners out of Mandalay jail and shaved their heads and put them among the monks to cause trouble. The bogus monks were chanting aggressively.

"They are still trying to send spies. When we have a new monk we do not know we test their knowledge of Buddhist literature. If they don't know we send them away."

In some monasteries, the monks were given time to pack up and get out. But in others, the monks fled without notice, leaving neatly made beds, books lining the shelves of their cubicles and the single key that each monk is permitted to possess.

Cats and dogs wander the prayer halls. Ask where the monks are and those that remain say they went back to their villages. What has happened to them there? Some were arrested but most have been left alone provided they do not try to return to their monasteries, according to the leading clerics.

"It was all about silencing them," said the monk at Old Ma Soe.

Lingering fear

Fear is pervasive in Burma. There are not many soldiers on the streets but the regime has many ordinary people believing that their every move is being watched and that anyone might be an informer.

Every household must register its occupants and if someone comes to stay for the night it must be reported to the local police station.

The fear is underpinned by the sheer numbers of men who have been through the regime's jails at some time or another, even if only for a few weeks.

The generation of protestors from 1988, the last major challenge to military rule, remember the slaughter of 3,000 of their number as the regime quashed the demonstrations, and also the mass arrests afterwards.

The latest crackdown has introduced a new generation to the regime's use of terror against its own population.

"There were 85 others in my police cell, mostly young people," said the young shopkeeper held in Mandalay's police station number 14. "Some were only 15 or 16 years old. One boy told me he was arrested for wearing an American flag on his head. Some of the students had broken bones and head wounds.

"At the end of three days I still hadn't confessed so they gave up and put me back in the cell and left me alone. Some of the others confessed under the pressure but they weren't real confessions.

I don't blame them. There were people in my cell who were interrogated non-stop for 15 days."

Among those detained were politicians from Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), elected in the annulled 1990 parliamentary election.

One, who was to afraid to be identified by name, was also interrogated at a Mandalay police station.

"I didn't even take part in the demonstrations because I knew they would identify me but we NLD members are always arrested anyway when there's trouble," he said.

"I was interrogated for five days in the police station. They only let me sleep for two or three hours a night and then questioned me from 9am to 3am the next morning."

After the interrogation, he was moved to Mandalay jail and held for another 25 days along with hundreds of other political activists or ordinary people who joined the demonstrations.

Conspiracy theories

Last week, the government called diplomats to the new capital, Naypyidaw, to lay out the results of all these interrogations.

The military said it had uncovered a longstanding plot involving "bogus monks", a little known exile group, the Forum for Democracy in Burma, and Open Society - a pro-democracy institute run by billionaire US financier George Soros - to bring down the regime.

The junta outlined a complex conspiracy to infiltrate the monasteries, the labour force and universities in an 18 page document filled with scores of names of alleged plotters and their backers.

Among others, it names U Gambira, the 27-year-old leader of the All Burma Monks Alliance who is presently locked up in Mandalay prison. The government accuses him and opposition politicians as using ordinary monks as a front for political ends.

"They have exploited the situation by using fake and bogus sanghas (Buddhist communities) knowing that the Myanmar people revered religion as well as the sangha and putting them in the front would create a predicament to the government in handling the crises. This is a 'by hook or by crook tactic' to overthrow the government," the document said.

"The uprisings dissolved within a very short time frame simply because the general public did not take part and our security forces were able to make pre-emptive strikes."

Foreign diplomats who have spoken to senior army officers since the protests say the regime is blind to the growing discontent at deepening economic hardship that underpinned the demonstrations.

The government maintains the illusion that Burma's economy is growing faster than China's even though the World Bank has rubbished statistics that claim to show double digit annual growth.

The reality can be seen in the contrasts with the booming economies of much of the rest of South-east Asia - Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia - particularly outside Yangon. There, hardly a new vehicle is to be seen besides scooters and Chinese-made motorbikes.

The principal means of transport is old, underpowered wooden buses and the horse and trap. Ploughs are pulled by cattle.

There is such a shortage of cars that 25 year-old vehicles worth a few hundred pounds across the border cost £10,000 in Burma. A SIM card for the government run mobile phone network, the only one there is, costs about £1,000.

Aside from a sprinkling of new hotels, there are few modern buildings to be seen beyond Yangon and the surreal new capital, Naypyidaw. Life expectancy is well short of that in Burma's neighbours.

The chief United Nations representative, Charles Petrie, left Yangon last week after being expelled for a speech in which he observed that Burma's per capita gross domestic product is less than half that of Cambodia or Bangladesh, and that the recent protests "clearly demonstrated the everyday struggle to meet basic needs".

"The average household is forced to spend almost three quarters of its budget on food. One in three children under five are suffering malnutrition, and less than 50% of children are able to complete their primary education," Petrie said in the address.

Closeted leaders

That is not the world the generals live in. They are cocooned in the new capital or Pyin U Lwin, an army town 90 minutes drive north of Mandalay.

It is home to the military's main barracks and the Defence Services Academy training base. The grand red-tiled entrance proclaims in foot-high gold lettering that its officers are The Triumphant Elite Of The Future.

Two new and vast mansions sit on distant hilltops, and a neighbourhood of spacious colonial-style homes is spreading in all directions - all apparently reserved for the military elite.

Few outsiders penetrate this closed world where career officers and their families live mostly cut off from the reality of the rest of Burma.

Inside that world, the junta portrays itself as all that stands between order and disintegration into ethnic conflict. It says it is committed to a road map to a "discipline flourishing democracy" that will lead to a "golden land in future".

But it has taken 14 years to complete the first two stages of the map, which means that at the present rate of progress the end of the road will not be reached until well into the second half of the century.

The military's view that it is central to Burma's very survival is displayed on the front of all the country's heavily censored newspapers, where each day appear the 12 "political, economic and social objectives" of the military government.

These include "uplift of the morale and morality of the entire nation" and "uplift of dynamism of patriotic spirit".

With this goes a statement of the "people's desire" which includes: "Crush all internal and external destructive elements as the common enemy".

But a senior monk who teaches at Pyin U Lwin's military academy said there is disquiet among some soldiers over the assault on the monks.

"Soldiers are telling their relatives not to go into the army. Many soldiers are unhappy with what has happened. Some of them are my pupils. Even some of the colonels tell me they don't agree with what has happened, they don't like it but they say the higher officers give the commands," he said.

"We are educating the new generation about what is right and what is wrong. Evolution is better than revolution. We have no weapons. They have the weapons. All we have is loving kindness.

"Who wants to be killed? People are very peaceful, very passive. No one wants to die, no one wants to kill. They are not like the Muslims. You never heard of Myanmar people suicide bombing.

"But it will not be quick. Maybe another 10 years."

Future hopes

Many people in Burma are patient, but not that patient. The frustration and sense of helplessness is reflected in their self-delusion among some that the United Nations will invade and overthrow the regime.

Others draw strength from the widespread practice of interpreting what are seen as auspicious signs.

Near Bagan a small pagoda has become the site of pilgrimage after a colony of bees settled on the face and chest of a Buddha. Bees are considered particularly auspicious and their choice of a Buddha has been widely interpreted as siding with monks against the regime.

Sitting atop a centuries old red brick pagoda nearby, Thet Pyin, a politician who has gone into hiding said many Burmese draw strength from the belief that the country's military leaders will pay for their crimes in the next life.

"They will have an amazing surprise in their afterlife. By killing monks they will come back as dogs who eat shit with many diseases, not the ones that eat good food and look nice; ugly dogs," he said.

There are not many who would dare say such things in openly but Thet Pyin is among them. The army first threw him into prison 45 years ago for his opposition to its rule.

"The problem the government has created for itself is that the conflict is no longer between the government and the people, it's between religion and the government," he said.

"That's important because 80% of the population is Buddhist and the government is Buddhist. All the army is Buddhist. That will be its downfall."

"I'm 81 years old. I've never in all my life seen as bad a government as this, as unqualified as this. Even the Japanese occupation was not as bad as this.

"These military people don't have a clue what they are doing and their treatment of the monks is the latest evidence of that."

Thet Pyin, a member of a small party that won three seats in the annulled 1990 election, said that the army duped people back then with pledges of democracy but that it will not be able to get away with that again.

"This regime managed to pacify people after the 1988 demonstrations with promises of multiparty elections and an open economy and that the military would return to the barracks," he said

"The army reneged on that but it was forced to make the promise. The regime is going to have to do something to pacify the people again but they will not believe its promises now."

"There are divisions in the army. The core of the dictatorship is small, it is at odds with the military in its larger role. This government will fall."

Burma's most renowned female writer, Ludu Daw Ahmar, is also outspoken against the regime.

Arrested in 1978 at the age of 63 on suspicion of links to the communist party, which she denies, Ahmar spent a year in Mandalay jail.

She has just celebrated her 92nd birthday and no longer fears what the regime might do to her. Frail and hard of hearing, she nonetheless remains vigorously defiant.

"People are very much afraid of the government but this can't go on forever, there will be a day when the people break this," she said. "When they can't stand it anymore they will find a way," she said.

"People may have to take up arms to defeat this regime. People will have to sacrifice their lives.

"There is no choice. We can't go on like this. We must get arms to resist them. I can't say how but the people must find arms."

That is not the view of most Burmese, or the monks who have taken up a low key but symbolically significant protest against the regime by refusing alms from the government.

Some monks turn their bowls upside down when offered food by soldiers, interpreted as a form of excommunication.

At the Old Ma Soe monastery the monks refused to invite government representatives to celebrations to mark its one hundredth anniversary. "We discussed among the leaders and decided we have no room for them," said a senior monk.

The clerics have also declared a boycott of government exams they are expected to take every year. But the monasteries hold their own exams in April, and some senior clerics are predicting that will mark the beginning of a new campaign of protest.

"The monasteries will be full again. They will not be silent. No one has changed their mind about this government," said a senior cleric in Mandalay.

"But we know it will not change tomorrow. It might take five years, it might take ten, but it will be go. It has no solutions."

Atop the pagoda near Bagan, the political activist who is now in hiding said the military is wrong to believe it has cowed another generation.

"Nobody won in September because it's not finished," he said.

The role of Buddhism in the wake of the crackdown - Shah Paung
Irrawaddy:Fri 14 Dec 2007

Dhamma sermons are usually attended almost exclusively by elderly people; however, since the crackdown on peaceful demonstrators in September, more and more laypersons, especially youths, are turning up at monasteries to listen to Buddhist sermons. Attending dhamma sermons is now a way for Burmese people to vent their defiance against the military government.

An ancient Sanskrit word meaning "justice" or "the law of nature," dhamma is taught by monks to Buddhist devotees at monasteries. Recently, these sermons have become popular events in Burma and a series of dhamma talks is currently being held from December 11 to 15 in South Okkalapa Township in Rangoon.

An eyewitness said that about 1,000 people have been attending the sermons, including many young people. The roads around the monastery have been blocked between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. each night because many people are finishing their work early to attend the sermons. Even former soldiers have been attending.

Sermons on dhamma are being given by well-known monks and abbots such as U Kawthala, Ashin Sundadhika, U Jotika, U Kovida, U Nyanithara and Ashin Say Keinda, who is currently a lecturer at the International Theravada Buddhist Missionary University in Rangoon.

In their talks, the monks often recount the words of Lord Buddha, telling their subjects that life is suffering and that, to atone for their sins, those who have committed evil acts would be committed to "ape-nga-ye" (the Buddhist version of "hell").

"We feel sad about the recent crisis," a former solider who requested anonymity told The Irrawaddy. "Until now we have felt nothing but pain when we think about [the crackdown on monks]."

He said that since he was a child, he had been taught that soldiers were here to protect the nation, the religion and the language. However, under current circumstances, the government's actions have completely contradicted that moral.

The ex-soldier served the military for 10 years until 2001 and is now nearly 40. He said that he now works in social welfare and follows religious issues. He estimated that more and more people were listening to dhamma talks since the crackdown because the sermons remind people about the forces of good and evil.

From students at a grade 4 level upward, laypersons are flocking to monasteries and to dhamma talk events, he claimed. Close to 90% of the population of Burma is Buddhist.

He went on to say that dhamma sermon VCDs and tapes were selling well all over the country. The organizers of dhamma events were making the VCDs and tapes by themselves and distributing them quietly. The Burmese military government has banned the distribution of dhamma VCDs and tapes through the country's censorship board. However, devotees have been making copies and sharing them with others.

Khin Oo, a woman resident in Rangoon, says the dhamma sermons are encouraging and she feels consoled when she listens to them. Often, she says, the sermons involve subtle jokes, indirectly criticizing the military government for oppressing and killing its own people.

She said that the most popular dhamma VCDs were the talks by U Kovida and U Nyanithara, which were recently banned by the authorities.

The title of the U Nyanithara VCD is "The Way of Dumb People," a pointed criticism of people who believe in astrology and commit evil acts. It is supposedly dedicated to the junta's leader, Snr-Gen Than Shwe, who is known to be a strong believer in astrology. A second VCD featuring U Nyanithara is titled "The Ending of the King."

At his recent dhamma talk in Rangoon U Kovida referred to the Burmese junta as the second "Azartathet." (Azartathet is an infamous villain who killed his father for power in Buddhist folklore). His sermon also included commentary on the September demonstrations. U Kovida, a Buddhist PhD scholar, is an abbot at Mizzima Gon Yee Monastery in Rangoon's Thakayta Township.

State Militias given riot control training
Irrawaddy: Fri 14 Dec 2007

The Burmese military junta has been giving riot control training to state-backed organizations, according to sources in Rangoon.

Members of the Ward Peace and Development Council, the Union Solitary and Development Association (USDA) and Swan Arr Shin were instructed to attend the training. Firemen, municipal employees and members of the newly formed state-backed youth organization were also told to take part.

"We were instructed in how to systematically crack down on crowds," a member of Swan Arr Shin told The Irrawaddy. "We were shown how to beat crowds in the event of mass protests. We were trained by military instructors."

Trainees were not paid to attend instruction sessions, which were held daily from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m. Over a period of two months. Training will resume in 2008, an instructor said.

"If we did not attend, we were registered as absent, and that could threaten our job security," said a municipal employee.

The junta used state-backed mass organizations like the USDA to assist in suppressing demonstrations in August and September. They were also involved in the attack on Aung San Suu Kyi and her convoy in Depayin, Sagaing Davision, northern Burma, in May 2003.

The season of forced labor
Mizzima News: Fri 14 Dec 2007

With Christmas and New Year's approaching, many parts of the world have their attention firmly focused on the imminent holiday season. But for rural Karen State, which maintains a significant Christian community, the season heralds a much grimmer prospect, the increased demands of forced labor in the service of the Burmese military.

In a report released yesterday, the Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG) states that a return to the cyclical dry season requisition of forced labor on the part of the junta is proof positive of the military's definition of the status-quo; a condition the junta reports the country to have successfully and positively returned to after the spike of unrest in September.

"The unwavering continuation of forced labour in rural areas serves as a clear statement to the international community of what the junta considers as a situation of normalcy all over the country," concludes the report.

Typical instances of forced labor in Karen state include the clearing of roads, repairs to military buildings, sentry duty and the transport of goods.

"When roads dry out sufficiently, local SPDC army officers press villagers into forced labour to recommence work supporting the regional programme of militarisation. Thatch and bamboo is ordered, washed out roads and military camps repaired, rainy season forest growth is cut back and new stores of rations are sent out. For all such work the Army relies on the forced labour of local villagers," says KHRG.

"When they send their rations we serve as security for them such as by helping them check the road. Both night and day the villagers must serve as sentries," Saw P, of Bu Tho township, told KHRG.

According to villagers, the military does not discriminate between age or gender, placing demands on young and old, men and women, alike.

November typically marks the end of the rainy season, after which the military imposes increased demands for forced labor on villagers.

KHRG's work also serves to remind the international community that, while most media attention is drawn to Rangoon, rural Burma continues to suffer under the junta's vice-like grip.

Karen are estimated to comprise 7 percent of Burma's population, with one-third of Karen believed to reside in Karen State. Approximately three-quarters of all Burmese live in rural communities.

Human trafficking a growing problem - Henry Sanderson
Associated Press: Fri 14 Dec 2007

Cross-border human trafficking for forced labor and prostitution is a growing problem along China's southern border, officials said Friday at a conference on the issue.

Greater cooperation among the various countries will be needed to fight the problem and track criminal gangs dealing in humans, officials from China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam said on the final day of the conference.

China uncovered 2,500 cases of human trafficking last year, and most involved criminal gangs, Chinese Vice Minister of Public Security Zhang Xinfeng said.

Zhang said the number of cross-border cases was still small at about 100. But he added the trend was for that "to grow and we need to further strengthen our cooperation and carry out further joint actions to combat this tendency."

A lack of reliable data makes it a difficult problem to tackle, and most of the information mainly comes from those who have been arrested and caught.

Representatives from the six countries that first reached agreement on human trafficking in 2004 met in Beijing this week to sign a declaration aimed at ending the problem.

Cambodian Minister for Women's Affairs, Ing Kantha Phavi, said the problem was not only a matter of criminal prosecution but of prevention. She was the only representative not from a law enforcement body and the only woman at the meeting.

"We need an … approach where all ministries can work together," she said.

Myanmar's Minister for Home Affairs, Gen. Maung Oo, said his country had stiff penalties of 10 years in prison to death for human trafficking, but faced problems because of its porous borders.

The Bush administration has said Myanmar is ineligible for U.S. aid for failing to meet minimum standards of fighting human trafficking.

The meeting ended a day after five people were jailed for abducting and trafficking eight boys in southern China's manufacturing center of Guangdong province.

The official Xinhua News Agency the five enticed boys with snacks. It said they then wanted to sell the boys in Fujian province for a total of $1,800.

How the Generals motor their way to millions - Wai Moe
Irrawaddy: Fri 14 Dec 2007

Targeted sanctions intended to hit Burma's generals where it hurts have so far neglected one of their major sources of income and personal prestige—the importation and resale of luxury automobiles.

Automobile prices in Burma are among the highest in the world. A new Toyota Land Cruiser, for example, costs around 400 million kyat (about US $312,000), five times the Web site list price of $63,000.

So why the discrepancy? The answer lies deep in the tangle of Burmese corruption and bureaucracy. For a start, an import license is required, and procuring one costs a lot of money—more than the average Burmese citizen can afford. Contacts at the top are also useful.

Automobiles prices have been rising steeply since the late 1990s, when ex-Gen Tun Kyi was Minister of Trade. Tun Kyi was forced to retire in 1997, but until his departure from office he and his family controlled the business of importing automobiles to Burma. He issued import license only to his cronies.

Before Tun Kyi was in charge, Burmese citizens employed in the shipping industry found it relatively easy to import automobiles. They earned hard currency and were in the position of shipping the vehicles into the country.

"But all changed after Gen Tun Kyi became Minister of Trade," a Burmese seaman from Rangoon told The Irrawaddy. "As result, automobile prices jumped more than ten times."

Tun Kyi was sacked amid accusations of corruption and rumors that he had huge sums of money stashed away in Singapore banks.

His departure from office brought no end to the corruption and manipulation of the automobile sales market, however.

"The generals learned the business from Tun Kyi," said a Rangoon businessman. "They realized that the automobile business is an easy way to make money. It involves no investment in property. They can invest in one automobile and earn millions of kyat from the deal."

After Tun Kyi's retirement, Myanmar Holding Ltd and Myan Gon Myint Co Ltd took control of the automobile business in Burma, according to business sources there.

"Both Myanmar Holding Ltd [See Pwar Yay Oo Paing] and Myan Gon Myint Co Ltd are now controlled by one of the junta's hardliners, Aung Thaung, Minister of Industry 1 and his family," said the businessman. "Aung Thaung has had control of Myanmar Holding Ltd since 1994. Myan Gon Myint Co Ltd is managed by Aung Thaung's sons."

There are currently two kinds of automobile import licenses in Burma— one for individuals and another for companies.

An import license for a Toyota Land Cruiser now costs at least 150 million kyat (about $ 117,000). High ranking officials who issue the licenses pocket about half that. By the time the Land Cruiser is put on sale its price has risen to at least 400 million kyat.

For those unable to find that kind of money, there's always the possibility of buying a "rebuilt" model from one of Burma's industry zones. The cut-price vehicles are imported and then reconstructed and branded "made in Burma." Cost: about 30 million kyat ($23,000).