Rev. Danny Fisher

In a post from just the other day, I talked about all of the recent protest activity by Theravāda Buddhist monks against the military junta in Myanmar (formerly Burma). Here’s the latest from Reuters:

Myanmar’s military junta said on Wednesday it had used tear gas and fired warning shots to disperse a crowd of 1,000 Buddhist monks and civilians protesting in the northwestern coastal city of Sittwe.

The admission on state-owned MRTV and in official newspapers was a thinly veiled warning to the former Burma’s 53 million people after a month of protests against decades of military rule and soaring fuel and food prices.

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Although Tuesday’s marches fell far short of a nationwide boycott [of alms from those affiliated to the junta], monks marched in seven towns and cities, including Yangon, the commercial hub of one of Asia’s brightest prospects when it won independence from Britain in 1948.

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In Yangon, authorities closed the famed Shwedagon Pagoda, the Southeast Asian nation’s holiest shrine, minutes before hundreds of monks arrived for the formal launch of a campaign to refuse to accept alms from anyone connected to the regime.

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Plainclothes police and USDA members shadowed the monks along their route, taking photographs and video, but there was no trouble and no arrests, witnesses said.

Amazingly, within hours of the crowd dispersion, the monks in Sittwe were right back at it again.

Nearly 1,000 Buddhist monks marched through the Myanmar city of Sittwe on Wednesday, a day after soldiers fired tear gas and warning shots to scatter a similar protest against the ruling generals, a witness said.

Urging thousands of bystanders not to join in, they staged a sit-in outside the local government offices to demand the release of two men sentenced to two years in jail for giving water to monks protesting against soaring fuel prices last month.

After several hours of talks, officials agreed to release the pair–identified by a legal source as Maung Saw Thein, 40, and Han Min Lwin, 36–in three days. They are believed to be held in Yangon’s infamous Insein prison.

The monks then dispersed to cheers from the crowds. Three or four small monk protests in Yangon also ended without incident.

The outcome was very different in Sittwe on Tuesday when soldiers fired tear gas and warning shots to disperse a crowd of 1,000 monks and demonstrators. One witness told Reuters three or four monks were hit and slapped as they were arrested.

In the junta’s version of events–a rare report of unrest in the former Burma’s official papers–nine policemen and a civilian official were injured as a small number of protesters attacked local government offices.

“Some protesters, including six monks holding sticks and swords, hit the officials with their weapons,” the New Light of Myanmar said.

“In order to control the situation, the officials threw a tear gas bomb into the group and opened fire in the air to threaten them.”

Also yesterday, actor/comedian Jim Carrey released another video about Nobel Peace laureate and junta prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi for the U.S. Campaign for Burma and the Human Rights Action Center. (You might recall mention of Mr. Carrey’s last video here.) The junta has blamed Suu Kyi (among others) for the unrest in Myanmar. Anyway, please check out the video below.