Thousands of Burmese monks and nuns have led a demonstration of perhaps one hundred thousand people in Rangoon, the former capital of the country. The demonstration is being called the ‘Saffron Revolution’ after the colour of the monks’ robes. Saffron, or gold, is a precious colour in Buddhist belief and the monks are highly revered in a country which takes its Buddhist heritage very seriously. The monks have, in a very important symbolic act, also protested around the perimeter of the Shwedagon, which is the most beloved and respected religious building in the whole country.
It is not just in Rangoon that protests are occurring, since there are reports of multi-thousand protests in Moulmein, Mandalay and elsewhere, with various ethnic minority groups also joining in the street protests. The demonstrators are united in their desire for democracy and, above all, the end of the repressive military junta which has controlled the country for decades. The junta refused to accept the results of the 1991 general election which was overwhelmingly won by the National League for Democracy (NLD), with almost 90% of the total vote. The leader of the NLD, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been kept under house arrest for virtually the entire period since the military takeover. Showing extraordinary strength of purpose and dignity, Aung San Suu Kyi has maintained her stance and refused to compromise with the military in order to secure her release. In one particularly heart-rending episode, she declined to visit her late husband, a professor at Oxford University, when he was diagnosed with the illness that was to claim his life. She knew that, if she went to him, she would never be allowed to return and that her people needed her just as much, perhaps more so, than her husband.
The military government has been working to try to sideline Aung San Suu Kyi, even going so far as to airbrush almost out of history her father, General Aung San, who is a great hero in Burmese history for his role in securing independence for the country from the British and in fighting against the Japanese army in the Second World War. However, these are not the worst crimes of which the junta is guilty. Numerous human rights reports have detailed the acts of forced porterage (slavery) used against the Burmese people, especially the many ethnic minority groups which are fighting for independence. Rape has been used as a deliberate tactic against the ethnic minority women on a large-scale.
Follow the latest developments in the demonstrations here.
