Myanmar: A New Day Coming?

The past few days, I've been following an intriguing set of events taking place in Myanmar. While CNN dot com is filled with Britney, OJ and other nonsense, the BBC has done a great job with coverage. Even better local coverage here.

In a nutshell: Recently, there have been some incidents where the ruling military dictatorship has incarcerated and held some local Buddhist monks. In addition, the monks are protesting a government policy that doubled gas prices overnight without warning (And we thought we had it rough in the US). While the government has been incarcerating and abusing its civilian citizens for years, it has always respected the monks in this extremely devout Buddhist nation. So in response, the Buddhist monks have gathered and marched peacefully the past six days. Each day, the numbers of protesting monks grows and fortunatley so far, there has been no violence.

Past tactics the government has used to combat civilian protests is to hire goon squads to intimidate and even violently break up any kind of protests inlcuding holding protesters indefinitely. The amazing thing that is happening now is that these are not civilian protests. The throngs of monks that have been forming these demonstrations have even, until recently, discouraged ordinary citizens from joining them to avoid the certain violence that would come with it.

Another development is the monks were allowed to march to the house of detained democracy activist and leader Aung San Suu Kyi. She even came out and showed her support for the monks.

Normally something like this is so far from my consciousness that the story remains a headline on a web site. However, this is different. When I was in Myanmar, I visited the Shwedagon Pagoda, which is the focal point for many of the protests. At the Pagoda, I met a monk and talked at length with him. He invited me to speak at the school where he was based. After that, we spent the afternoon together, him asking me about Western culture, discussing religion and life. When I caught my flight later that day, he gave me a blessing. I imagine he is joining in these protests and I wish for his safety along with a positive outcome for the people of Myanmar.