AP

Posted: 2007-09-21 01:47:50

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) – About 200 Buddhist monks staged a brief demonstration in Myanmar on Friday, the fourth day of protests in the country, witnesses said. A day earlier, nearly 1,000 monks and thousands of citizens marched, the largest challenge in a decade to the iron-fisted junta that rules the nation.

Braving driving rain, the monks converged at Mei Lamu pagoda on the outskirts of Yangon. After chanting sermons and praying for 15 minutes, the monks dispersed, witnesses said.

It was the fourth straight day the monks have marched in Yangon. Their activities have given new life to a protest movement that began a month ago after the government raised fuel prices, sparking demonstrations against policies that are causing economic hardship.

Authorities normally quick to crack down hard on dissent left the marchers alone, apparently wary of stirring up further problems.

On Thursday, processions of monks converged from various monasteries around Yangon in the early afternoon at the golden hilltop Shwedagon pagoda, the country’s most revered shrine. They prayed there before embarking on a more than three-hour march through Yangon in steady rain, gathering supporters as they went.

Monks at the head of the procession carried religious flags and an upside-down alms bowl, a symbol of protest.

Some monks are refusing alms from the military and their families – a religious boycott deeply embarrassing to the junta. In the Myanmar language, the term for “boycott” comes from the words for holding an alms bowl upside down.

As the monks marched calmly through the streets, some onlookers offered refreshments while others kept the streets clean by picking up water bottles.

The government appeared to be handling the situation gingerly, aware that any action seen as mistreating the monks could ignite public outrage. They are aware that restraining monks poses a dilemma, because monks are highly respected in predominant Buddhist Myanmar, and abusing them in any manner could cause public outrage.

A member of one of the junta’s neighborhood councils said it had been given instructions by authorities not to interfere with the protesting monks.

“We’ve been instructed to be patient and to even protect the monks,” said the official, who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to release information.

No uniformed security personnel were in sight, although dozens in plainclothes stood by without interfering. Car and motorbikes carrying junta supporters – present at most previous protests – were also absent.

Rumors that a state of emergency had been declared were denied by a government spokesman.

“You can see the government handling the situation peacefully,” the Information Ministry’s Ye Htut said in an e-mail.

“Anti-government groups want to see the state of emergency because their objective is to exploit and provoke the Sangha (monks), students, workers and innocent people,” and to provoke riots and anarchy, he said. “So they use rumors to destabilize the situation.”

While many bystanders clasped their hands together in a traditional gesture of respect as the procession passed, others joined in to march with the monks.

Witnesses said the number of marchers swelled to as many as 5,000 by the end, many of them linking arms in a human chain to protect the monks from outside agitators.

The protests express long pent-up opposition to the repressive regime and have become the most sustained challenge to the junta since a wave of student demonstrations that were forcibly suppressed in December 1996.

The junta’s crackdown on the protesters has drawn increasing criticism from world leaders, including U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and President Bush . They have called for the government to release opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has been under house arrest for more than 11 of the past 18 years.

The U.N.’s envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, focused on the protests in a Security Council briefing Thursday.

“The developments over the last few weeks in Myanmar have raised serious concerns in the international community and once again underscore the urgency to step up our efforts to find solutions to the challenges facing the country,” Gambari told the council, according to a U.N. account of the closed session.

Gambari said he was very concerned about protesters who have been detained and expressed hope for their release.

The demonstrations had been faltering, with about 200 protesters being detained, before the monks entered the fray.

Monks angered over being manhandled at a Sept. 5 demonstration in Pakokku in north central Myanmar had threatened to take to the streets unless the junta apologized. The regime remained silent, so they launched protests around the country on Tuesday that have been steadily growing.

Monks may now be assuming the vanguard because top pro-democracy activists were rounded up soon after the start of the demonstrations, said Debbie Stothard of Altsean-Burma, a Bangkok, Thailand-based coalition of non-governmental groups working for human rights and democracy in Myanmar, also known as Burma.

“In these situations, the monks have sought to protect the civilian population by taking sole responsibility for these protests,” she said by e-mail. “Despite this, if the monks are violently attacked en masse, it will be inevitable that the rest of the population will weigh in.”

The monks and their followers in Yangon stopped briefly in front of the U.S. Embassy. Washington is a top critic of the junta.

Speaking to the crowd, an unidentified monk said people’s lives were getting worse because the government was “unjust and selfish.”

“We will stage our marches every sabbath day,” said another monk who sat on a huge ornamental chair. The next Buddhist sabbath falls on Sept. 26.

As the monks marched, they chanted sermons, avoiding explicit anti-government gestures. But their message of protest was unmistakable to fellow citizens as monks normally leave their monasteries only for morning rounds with bowls seeking alms.

Unconfirmed reports said monks staged protests in several other cities Thursday, including Pakokku and Monywa in north central Myanmar.

Monks have historically been at the forefront of protests in the country, first against British colonialism and later against military dictatorship. They played a prominent part in a failed 1988 pro-democracy uprising that sought an end to military rule, imposed since 1962.

AP writer Sarah DiLorenzo at the United Nations contributed to this report.