[LINK] Protests in Myanmar

[rfmcdonald]

Daniel Drezner observation last week that Buddhist monks were actively protesting against the military junta that runs Myanmar might be taken as a road sign pointing towards the broader spread of protests in that unfortunate Southeast Asian country.

Public protests are rare in Myanmar, where the regime maintains strict social controls. Military leaders apparently did not foresee or plan for the protests that have attended their shock-therapy policies. Whether the public anger snowballs into a full-blown mass movement, as happened in 1988, depends largely on how the historically heavy-handed regime responds in the weeks ahead.

The violent tactics employed by the regime to quell the protests so far, however, do not augur well for future stability. Small, peaceful protest marches have continued for weeks in Yangon, Myanmar's main commercial city and until recently the national capital.

They have since spread to several other parts of the country, including crucially the central town of Pakokku, near Mandalay, where an estimated 100 Buddhist monks recently spearheaded the unrest, including taking government officials hostage and burning their cars. The military eventually fired warning shots, and one monk was badly hurt in the melee.

The junta has long fretted about politicized monks - who command deep respect among the population and many of whom are known to sympathize with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest. Since the early 1990s, the military have effectively controlled the Buddhist governing religious bodies by retiring, replacing and relocating known-dissident abbots.

But the recent clergy-inspired violence and the military's violent response may yet prove to be a watershed moment. The monks have demanded an apology from the government for its use of force, but to date junta leaders have failed to reply. In the meantime, in an unprecedented move, police and security forces have been deployed outside the monasteries in the key Buddhist cities of Mandalay, Pakkoku and Yangon to prevent the monks from staging further protests.

Last year's relocation of the capital from the populous port city of Yangon to the isolated inland community of Naypyidaw may have been undertaken in part with the motive of sparing the government the bother of dealing with the general population. Hopefully, that might have been too little too late.