Rev. Danny Fisher

Let’s start with the bad, which is coming out of Myanmar:

After nine days of restraint, Burma’s military rulers cracked down on protesting Buddhist monks Wednesday, with security forces firing warning shots, shooting tear gas canisters, swinging truncheons and making scores of arrests to suppress anti-government marchers.

The violence, despite appeals for negotiations from around the world, suggested that the junta has decided to put an end to what has become Burma’s most serious political uprising since 1988, even at the price of more opprobrium from abroad.

Maung Maung, secretary general of the National Council of the Union of Burma, an exile group based in Thailand, said he had reports from a Rangoon hospital that four protesting monks were treated for bullet wounds and a fifth had died after being shot. The government said one person had been killed.

Khim Maung Win of the Democratic Voice of Burma, an opposition media organization based in Norway, said eight people–five monks and three civilians–were killed, the Associated Press reported.

But even with such an aggressive response from the government, the “Saffron Revolution” remains resolute.

Despite the crackdown, thousands of maroon-robed monks, joined by cheering students and other lay democracy activists, marched in two columns through the center of Rangoon, Burma’s largest city, picking up support as they went, according to exile groups, news agency dispatches and images transmitted from the country electronically.

Exile groups in Thailand estimated that the number of marchers and protesters on the sidelines reached more than 100,000 by the end of the afternoon, making it one of the largest demonstrations since the rebellion began. Other big gatherings were reported in Mandalay, Burma’s second-largest city, in Sittwe on the northwest coast and in several other towns across the country.

The protesters came into the streets in defiance of orders handed down Tuesday evening banning gatherings of five or more people and imposing a dusk-to-dawn curfew in Rangoon and Mandalay.

Defiance has also, unfortunately, given way to violence from protestors (including monastics) in some areas.

According to sources in exile and news agency accounts, one group clashed with police near the Shwedagon Pagoda, a revered shrine that has been the departure point for daily protest marches since the middle of the month. Monks burned two cars and some were beaten by police wielding truncheons, according to reports reaching the exile groups.

A confrontation also erupted outside the Sule Pagoda, another shrine that has been the destination for marches, as young monks tried to force their way through a police line, the reports said. Several monks were seen being hustled away by police and driven off in trucks, the Associated Press reported.

In response to today’s news, Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party denounced the brutal response of the junta, calling it “the greatest wrong in history.” Amnesty International called for immediate action by the U.N. Security Council.

Pray for the violence to break.

---

And now for that good news, which comes to us courtesy of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review‘s associate editor Andrew Merz. (Thank you, sir.)

Facing pressure from religious groups, civil libertarians and members of Congress, the federal Bureau of Prisons has decided to return religious materials that had been purged from prison chapel libraries because they were not on the bureau’s lists of approved resources.

Regular readers will remember mention of the book purge in this post (from Monday), this post, and this post.

In an e-mail message Wednesday, the bureau said: “In response to concerns expressed by members of several religious communities, the Bureau of Prisons has decided to alter its planned course of action with respect to the Chapel Library Project.

“The bureau will begin immediately to return to chapel libraries materials that were removed in June 2007, with the exception of any publications that have been found to be inappropriate, such as material that could be radicalizing or incite violence. The review of all materials in chapel libraries will be completed by the end of January 2008.”

There remains cause for concern, though, as the article from the New York Times explains:

After the details of the removal became widely known this month, Republican lawmakers, liberal Christians and evangelical talk shows all criticized the government for creating a list of acceptable religious books.

The bureau has not abandoned the idea of creating such lists, Judi Simon Garrett, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail message. But rather than packing away everything while those lists were compiled, the religious materials will remain on the shelves, Ms. Garrett explained.

[...]

“Certainly putting the books back on the shelves is a major victory, and it shows the outcry from all over the country was heard,” said Moses Silverman, a lawyer for three prisoners who are suing the bureau over the program. “But regarding what they do after they put them back, I’m concerned.”

Still, the books are going back on the shelves, and this seems like a step in the right direction. And given the rightfully negative response to the purge and its subsequent effect, I suspect the Bureau of Prisons will proceed a bit more thoughtfully in the future.

So, for the moment anyway, this is good news.