Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong
On Wednesday, 15 August 2007, Burma’s military government increased the costs of fuels, over which it holds a monopoly, by up to five times the previous level.
There was no prior announcement. The price increases were immediately passed to passengers on public transport and shortly thereafter the prices of basic food items, including rice, salt and oil, also began to shoot up.
The majority of people in Burma are already living from day to day, and countless numbers in rural areas are just a step away from starvation. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in June took the remarkable step of publicly chastising the regime for the “immense suffering” it is causing to people in outlying regions. In October, the Asia regional director of the World Food Programme said that “the government’s policies, its harsh travel and trade restrictions, unnecessarily trap millions in lives of poverty and malnutrition”. Even in towns and cities, ordinary persons are finding it hard to scrape together a living, and by the estimate of the United Nations humanitarian relief office in Rangoon, the average family spends three quarters of its income on food alone. Millions of youth have gone to Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and further abroad to earn any kind of wage under whatever terms and conditions offered and send something back home.
So it was not surprising that despite the risks, people quickly started going to the streets in protest. On August 19 around 500 persons marched some nine kilometres through Rangoon to demand that the price increases be revoked. On August 21 some hundreds more marched, and were this time met by members of the government-organised Swan-arshin (“masters of force”): gangs of thugs acting as proxies for the security forces. As on the previous occasion, plainclothes police and intelligence officers stood on the sidelines and took photographs and video footage of the marchers.
On the night of August 21, dozens of persons who led the protests were taken away, most from their houses. Many were veterans of the historic 1988 uprising who had been released
From prison only in recent years. According to an article in the state media that appeared to have been written even before or during the operation, they were being interrogated for attempting to disrupt the national convention to write a new constitution, which has been running since 1994. Perversely, the article blamed the detainees for provoking the public by “taking advantage” of the increased fuel prices. Meanwhile, special branch police were reportedly waiting outside the houses of other persons to arrest them if they attempted to go on to the streets.
In the following days, as protests continued and spread to other parts of the country, more people were detained without reference to any law. Among them were U Myint Aye, the leader of the Human Rights and Promoters and Defenders group, who was taken by township council officials and Special Branch police from near his house in Rangoon on the morning of August 24 as he was taking food to his in-laws to mark his wife’s birthday.
Footage shot by an unidentified person at around 1pm on 25 August 2007 vividly captured the lawlessness of the authorities’ behaviour, showing at least six unidentified plain- clothed men carrying protest leader Ko Htin Kyaw struggling as he was literally lugged away and bundled into to a waiting vehicle in the centre of downtown Rangoon, within sight of the famous Sule Pagoda. (The video can be viewed on the DVB website: http://dvb.cachefly.net/tv/all/htinkyaw.wmv.) Htin Kyaw and another man, Ko Zaw Nyunt, had together been demonstrating peacefully outside the Theingyi market when they were taken. Had the authorities wished, they could have sent uniformed police officers to make an arrest under any of the terms set down in the country’s Criminal Procedure Code and taken the two men on foot to the nearest police station. Instead, an unknown gang, presumably consisting of plain-clothed Special Branch police, Swan-arshin and local council officials, came out of nowhere to grab and drag off their quarry in the manner of criminals. Their abduction characterised the response to the demonstrators until
September, when the sheer scale of protest forced the authorities to use more overt and tried-and-tested means of regaining control.
Many self-described experts and analysts abroad quickly concluded that with over a hundred key activists and protestors swiftly detained or forced into hiding, the rallies, although significant, would not lead to an uprising on the scale of 1988. But on the contrary, protests continued and within a second week had spread to parts of at least six out of the country’s 14 states and divisions. On August 28 over 150 monks and novices marched in Sittwe, the capital of Arakan State, on the western seaboard. Fittingly, they chose to walk along U Ottama Street, named after a monk from the region who led the struggle against British colonial rule and was imprisoned with hard labour for three years as a consequence. In Pegu, near Rangoon, a protest that began with around 50 persons on the same morning soon swelled to over 500; the marchers were greeted with applause and gifts of snacks and drinks. An uprising had truly begun, and was taking on a life of its own.
The Pakokku incident & Saffron Revolution
On September 5 the protests took a dramatic turn when about 500 Buddhist monks in Pakokku in upper Burma who had protested against the fuel price hikes with banners and verses of loving kindness (metta bavana) were met by uniformed soldiers who fired about 10 to 15 bullets before they dragged some monks away. At least one monk was tied to an electricity pole and beaten with rifle butts and bludgeons.
This was the first time that the military was directly used to suppress one of the protests since August 15, and against monks at that. It drew a strong and swift response. On September 6 a group of officials, headed by the secretary of the Magwe Division Peace and Development Council and head of the divisional Department of Religious Affairs went to Mahavithutarama monastery at around 10am to ask the residents not to demonstrate. Some monks allegedly began throwing rocks at their cars. A standoff followed, and the group was held hostage for about another six hours before being released. The officials were let out at the back door, as there was a huge crowd in front of the monastery. Four cars were destroyed during the incident and according to further reports, groups of monks went to at least one house and one shop belonging to members of the Swan-arshin and quasi-government Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), and damaged property as well as writing slogans on the outside. The incident was condemned in the state media; however, only the destruction of the cars was mentioned, not the hostage-taking and other events.
Shortly thereafter, the Mandalay Monks Union called for a nationwide religious boycott, a “turning of the alms bowl” against the government, USDA and Swan-arshin.
The last time such a boycott was declared on any scale in Burma was in 1990, after an attack on monks at a ceremony to commemorate the 1988 uprising that left two of them dead, along with two members of the public; it was brutally suppressed, thousands of monks detained and disrobed, hundreds of monasteries blockaded and raided, and a series of orders issued to prohibit religious organisations not explicitly approved by the state. These orders were again invoked during 2007, as was the language of sorting genuine from “bogus” monks.
But in the aftermath of the Pakokku incident, the view of monks in Burma was that such an extraordinary moment had again arrived. Beginning from September 17, in response to the failure of the regime to apologise for the violence, thousands took to the streets of cities and towns around the country, including Rangoon, Mandalay, Pegu, Sittwe, Kale, Pakokku, Kyaukpadaung, Tharrawaddy, Aunglan and Chauk. In many places the street marches were accompanied by special ceremonies in accordance with the disciplinary code of the Buddhist order, the Vinaya, to reject as a matter of moral and religious duty any offer of donations from the military or its supporters, or to preach before them. In a recording of one, which was held at an undisclosed location in Rangoon on September 18, the boycott was declared as follows:
Reverend clergy, may you listen to my words. The violent, mean, cruel, ruthless, pitiless kings [military leaders]–the great thieves who live by stealing from the national treasury–have killed a monk at Pakokku, and also arrested reverend clergymen by trussing them up with rope. They beat and tortured, verbally abused and threatened them. The clergy who are replete with the Four Attributes [worthy of offerings, hospitality, gifts and salutation] must boycott the violent, mean, cruel, ruthless, pitiless soldier kings, the great thieves who live by stealing from the national treasury. The clergy also must refuse donations (of four types) and preaching. This is to inform, advise and propose.
Reverend clergy, may you listen to my words. The violent, mean, cruel, ruthless, pitiless soldier kings–the great thieves who live by stealing from the national treasury–have killed a monk at Pakokku, and also arrested reverend clergymen by trussing them up with rope. They beat and tortured, verbally abused and threatened them. Clergy replete with the Four Attributes–boycott the violent, mean, cruel, ruthless, pitiless
kings, the great thieves who live by stealing from the national treasury. Clergy–also refuse donations and preaching. If the reverends consent and are pleased at the boycott and refusal of donations and preaching, please stay silent; if not in consent and displeased, please voice objections.
The clergy boycotts the violent, mean, cruel, ruthless, pitiless kings, the great thieves who live by stealing from the national treasury. The clergy hereby also refuses donations and preaching.
On September 21, the All Burma Monks Alliance—which emerged as a source of leadership during the uprising—issued a statement to the entire clergy and people calling for them to “struggle peacefully against the evil military dictatorship until its complete downfall”. What had begun superficially as protests about economic hardship was by now an overtly political struggle.
On September 22, hundreds of monks marched towards Hledan along Pyi Road in Rangoon and approached the home of the democracy party leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi on University Avenue. She came to the gate and paid respect to the protesting monks while the crowd shouted “Long Live Aung San Suu Kyi”. This was her first public appearance since May 2003; however, security forces blocked them on the following day. Meanwhile, thousands of monks marched in Mandalay, which together with its surrounds has the highest concentration of clergy in the entire country.
Within a few days, the monks were met by growing numbers of ordinary citizens, and the scale of the protests quickly escalated to the point that they captured global attention. By September 23, monks in the big cities and towns walking through flooded streets chanting verses of loving kindness were joined by human chains on either side of the road, and elsewhere around the country by crowds of delighted onlookers. In the ancient city of Amarapura around one thousand were met by elderly citizens 
who tearfully paid their respects and called upon them to lead them out from the poverty and misery induced by the nation’s “bad kings”—a reference to one of the five traditional enemies against which refuge is sought when paying religious homage (sometimes simply “kings”; the other four being floods, fire, thieves and ungrateful heirs).
On September 24, thousands of monks in Rangoon headed for the two holiest Buddhist sites in the city, Shwedagon Pagoda and Sule Pagoda. The monks marched in five columns, stretching more than a kilometer. They were joined by thousands of civilians who locked their arms to protect the monks, cheering and chanting. The crowd occupied five blocks and some estimates put it at around 100,000. Protests also took place in at least 25 other towns in the country, including in Pegu, Mandalay, Sagaing and Magwe, as well as in towns in Mon, Arakan and Kachin states and Kawthaung in Tenasserim Division.
Among the protestors was a blogger in one town who posted news and photographs about the protests including on September 24 that,
Today across the whole of Burma is an historic day when the monkhood and people have united to participate in a general strike for an end to injustice and for the emergence of justice in its stead. Protests have been held in every part of the country and our town too held a peaceful protest march has been held for about an hour.
If you ask about the numbers involved, then we can say that the entire clergy from some monasteries are taking part, and from some perhaps half. Right now the long line of monks is visible wherever you were in town. As for the townsfolk, if you count people supporting and watching on as well as those joining the march, then you can say that the entire town is involved. Today’s protest goes down as the biggest in town history .
The monks are chanting verses of loving kindness for peace. Furthermore, they are carrying placards and peacefully calling for an apology from the government [for the attack on monks in Pakokku on September 5], lowered commodity prices, the release of political prisoners and national reconciliation. After marching around the town the monks have gone up to the platform of a town pagoda, separated from the peaceful crowds and ended the protest.
Today’s protest in which the entire town and huge numbers of monks have participated in unity, peacefully and with discipline has been truly wondrous. Considering that such crowds joined in with discipline and so peacefully, it cannot be denied that this is evidence that our town is a town deserving of democracy.
But for the reports of this blogger, the events in this town would have been little known outside. There were many other places all over the country where such protests took place but were not documented. (The blog site was later shut down and reopened minus all posts on the demonstrations. For the safety of the author, specific references to the blog and locations have been removed. For this reason also, some of the photographs used in this article have not been attributed.)
By September 25, the military regime was openly threatening people to get off the streets, but the numbers of protestors continued to grow. Prominent actor and social activist Kyaw Thu and famous comedian Zarganar led over 20 actors, artists and writers to give alms to the monks at the Shwedagon Pagoda. A column of thousands of monks left from there at 1pm and marched through Bahan Township together with members of the public. Some protestors waved red Fighting Peacock flags of the student groups that led the protests in 1988. Others carried banners calling for the release of political prisoners, national reconciliation, and saying that “this is a non-violent people’s action”. Meanwhile, in Taunggok, Arakan State and in Monywa, Sagaing Division tens of thousands of people also joined the monks.
Backlash & confrontation
On September 26, the military government ordered a 60-day 9pm to 5am curfew on Rangoon and Mandalay, and a prohibition on assemblies of more than five persons. Uniformed riot police and soldiers took to the streets and built barriers outside the main pagodas. When an estimated 10,000 protestors, among them 500 monks and some nuns, marched to Shwedagon Pagoda again around 11am they were hit with teargas and assaulted: dozens were taken away, and there were the first reports of many unconfirmed deaths. Swan-arshin and other government heavies were also said to be among the attackers there, and in other parts of the city. Some were later rewarded with additional payments, sacks of rice, and permanent work with the city council, according to news reports.
However, protestors assembled and sat on the ground together around the Sule Pagoda at the city centre, chanting slogans like, “The people’s armed forces are our armed forces” and “The people’s army must not kill the people”. Around 3pm riot police again assaulted protestors and fired tear gas there. Unknown numbers—possibly hundreds—of monks and ordinary citizens were taken away in trucks to unconventional detention centres at a racetrack, the Mingalardone air force base and the Government Technical Institute (GTI) in Insein (all north of the Rangoon city centre).
Over ten thousand also marched in Mandalay, starting from the Dhammikarama and Taung-htilin monasteries, through the city. Although they were not met with violence as in Rangoon, there were army roadblocks in places with armed troops, including at the historic Phayagyi Pagoda. Some monasteries also reportedly had armed soldiers outside. Protests also continued in Sittwe and Pakokku.
On the morning of September 27 people around the world were wondering if the protestors in Burma would quietly stay indoors after the threats of the day before. They did not. Throughout the day, tens of thousands again gathered in Rangoon, Mandalay and Sittwe, and smaller groups came together elsewhere.
In Rangoon, crowds assembled on the road to Sule Pagoda in the city centre were soon met with gas, gunfire and baton charges from assembled troops, riot police and auxiliary forces. They repeatedly retreated and reformed. By nightfall thousands had still not dispersed; the voice of an eyewitness speaking to the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) radio from Pansodan, in the downtown area, was punctuated by the sound of gunfire from near and far.
By the admission of the military regime alone nine died in Rangoon—among them four monks, a high school student, university student and a Japanese journalist. (In November it acknowledged 15 deaths.) But by all accounts there were many other casualties.
At least seven persons died outside High School No. 3 in Tamwe Township when troops pursuing protestors from Pansodan opened fire and drove a truck into the crowd before assaulting people with truncheons; however, security forces took the bodies away. Others who were beaten allegedly had their money, jewellery and mobile telephones robbed by the troops. One dead person who was later identified was 16-year-old Maung Thet Paing Soe, a ninth grade student at the school. His family obtained permission to cremate his body, which was being kept at a government facility, but they could not invite anyone for the funeral. The corpse had reportedly been autopsied but no report was given to the family. According to family members, at the time they went they saw roughly six bodies in that mortuary.
Eight corpses were reportedly left on the road after security forces attacked a crowd in South Okkalapa, between the Punnami and Post Office intersections. Local residents knew some victims, and took them back to houses in the neighbourhood. But after a short time, security forces allegedly entered the area, searched and located the bodies and took them away. One was identified as 31-year-old Ko Htun Htun Lin, a local resident whom witnesses said police and troops beat to death with truncheons outside the township post office.
There were also many unconfirmed reports that from 80 to 200 bodies of monks and ordinary citizens, including some who were seriously injured but not yet dead, were taken from the Kyaikkasan interrogation centre and burned at Ye Wei crematorium outside of Rangoon around midnight on September 29. According to one person claiming to have quit the Rangoon city council hygiene department who was assigned there, drunken soldiers moved the bodies, which included at least one woman who looked to have come from a well-off family, and another who was pregnant.
Elsewhere, a young man who was closely involved in the protests in Taunggut, Arakan State, was reportedly found dead in a creek on October 19. According to news reports, the police took and disposed of the body of Ko Nyi Pu Lay and did not inform his relatives; only when they filed a missing person report at the station on October 24 were they told of what had happened to him and they confirmed his identity from clothing.
In Mandalay, thousands of demonstrating monks and civilians were warned with gunfire from troops and riot police stationed at roadblocks all around the city. Hundreds were also assaulted and arrested, but they were joined for the first time by a column of over a hundred monks from the Buddhist University there.
Large numbers of demonstrators chose to confront the military, despite obvious risks to life and liberty. While some were killed and more injured, far larger numbers were taken into illegal detention: in Mandalay virtually the entire National League for Democracy (NLD) leadership was been picked up. Hundreds of monks were rounded up and tens of thousands confined to their monasteries by troops. At the school in Tamwe, students and others also were driven off en masse.
By the most conservative estimates as of September 28 at least 700 monks and 500 ordinary citizens had been taken away by security forces in every part of the country. A few days later the authorities themselves acknowledged that over 2500 were in custody and being “investigated”. They included prominent persons, such as comedians Par Par Lay in Mandalay and Zarganar in Rangoon (both were later released with warnings), and staunch human rights defenders such as lawyer U Aye Myint in Pegu. But the vast majority consisted of ordinary persons who had joined the protests out of sheer frustration at the unbearable conditions in their country. Many were women. Many had left their houses in the morning and simply did not come home at night, among them 30-year-old Ma Ke Naing Zaw, a mother of two from Pazundaung Township in Rangoon who disappeared while coming home from a hospitality course at the Kandawgyi Palace Hotel on September 27. Similarly, 18-year-old Ma Po Po Pyi Sone and her two sisters, Ma Thida Aung and Ma Moe Moe Swe, both aged 23 (parents U Myint Win Maung and Daw Aye Aye Maw), left Batheinmye Ward in Dawpone Township in the afternoon of the same day and did not come back; however, they were released from custody on October 3. By contrast, still missing at the start of October was Ma May Mi Oo, whose mother said in interviews that she had been taken from their house in Bahan Township, Rangoon, on the night of September 19, three months’ pregnant with her first child at the time. Local officials had denied any knowledge of her whereabouts.
Persons taken from their houses or neighbourhoods have described a similar pattern of being called at night, being told that they would not be gone long and would not need to take anything with them, being blindfolded and not being told where they were being taken or by whom, and being assaulted for no reason. The experience of Par Par Lay, interviewed by the Burmese service of the Voice of America (VOA) on November 1, was typical:
They called for me on the night of September 25. Around 1am we had an annual donation ceremony going on at our ward’s religious hall and I was there for that programme. It was while that was going on that they came and immediately shoved me into a van. “Wait, I need to get my stuff,” I said. “Never mind, you don’t need anything,” they said. I didn’t have anything warm, just a light shirt and lengyi; not even slippers. “Get on the van,” they said, so I got on and they blindfolded me and took me away. I didn’t know how come.
Back at my house, my wife asked them, “Which organisation are you from? Tell me, why are you taking him? What are your names?” “You don’t need to know,” they said
There was another person on the van with face covered. I didn’t know him. At about 3am we reached the Shwesaryan riot police camp. It’s called the number 4 camp, riot police. After we got there, the story began. “So, we have some questions for you,” they said and forced us to sit and began the interrogation. It was tough, because they hit us constantly. They kept changing the guy. One would interrogate, the other one would take a rest. Like that.
Reports soon began filtering out about conditions for detainees. Witnesses at the GTI and Kyaikkasan camp told stories of disrobed monks being whipped and kicked in the head. At least three persons and one monk who were receiving emergency treatment at the Rangoon General Hospital were removed while still getting medical attention, and taken to undisclosed locations. Four detainees taken to Insein Prison after the protests in August were transferred to the jail hospital where they were kept isolated from other inmates, also having been seriously tortured. On September 27, a disrobed monk was brought to the Rangoon General Hospital for treatment of injuries to his feet that were apparently caused by torture.
Monks, monasteries and religious objects were not spared from the violence meted out on the rest of the population. After nighttime raids on September 26 and 27, over 300 monks from the Ngwekyaryan and Meggin Monasteries in the northern suburbs of Rangoon were reportedly taken to the GTI and forcibly disrobed. At least two persons, 33-year-old Maung Kyaw Kyaw of Shwebo Road and Maung Than Aung of Inwa Road, both in South Okkalapa, were killed during the raid on Ngwekyaryan. The monasteries were profaned, smashed and looted in the same manner in which troops have demolished villages in outlying civil war areas for years: money, electrical equipment and Buddha statues were carried off. (Video of the Ngwekyaryan Monastery after the raid can be seen on the DVB website: http://dvb.cachefly.net/tv/all/27sep.wmv.) In October, township council officials and Special Branch police came back to the Meggin Monastery, which is in Thingankyun, and searched for items to use in prosecuting its abbot, U Einda. The monastery had remained sealed off for some days after the raid, and when it was reopened only two monks were allowed to return and reside in it.
Not only in Rangoon and Mandalay but elsewhere too soldiers stormed religious buildings and took away their occupants. For instance, according to The Irrawaddy news service troops raided monasteries in Bamaw, Irrawaddy Division and took away 108 monks. When they began reciting protective verses while in prison they were separated. Some 30 of them started a hunger strike. On September 27 they were sent from the prison to army lockups. Similarly, on September 27 soldiers raided the Pauk- myaing Monastery in Chanmyathazi Township, Mandalay and arrested most of the 50 monks who were praying at the time; a few managed to escape.
There were also many reports of troops walking across images of the Buddha and the Buddhist flag, dropped in the streets by fleeing monks at the start of the crackdown, and of troops entering religious premises with their boots on. Ironically, this behaviour closely resembles the actions of British colonial troops, which used pagodas, including the Shwedagon Pagoda, as military encampments, and also refused to remove their footware on religious grounds, as required by custom. It was this behaviour that in part led many monks at that time to join and lead the anti-colonial movement around the country.
Following news of the raids on monasteries, townspeople in various places organised themselves to defend their monasteries. People in some areas arranged early-warning systems with lookouts posted and everybody participating in yelling and banging pots and pans when soldiers, police and others approach, whether night or day. They also armed themselves with sticks, knives, slingshots and jingalee—nails or sharpened bicycle spokes fired from catapaults—with which to fight government personnel trying to enter the temples.
For instance, at 10:15pm on September 27 as a unit approached a monastery in Dawbone Township, Rangoon they were repelled by around 50 persons breaking the curfew to come out on to Thaddaryone Road in Ward 2. The troops fired weapons before leaving. At 12pm on the same night, a unit of soldiers led by Colonel Tin Htun, Rangoon Army Area 2 commander, was repelled when it tried to enter the Minnandar Monastery in Pyidaw-aye Ward. On the night of September 28, armed residents intercepted troops who were approaching a monastery nearby the Meh-lamu Pagoda in North Okkalapa Township, northern Rangoon, and forced them to retreat. Meanwhile, in Thaketa Township, in the east of Rangoon, residents surrounded troops outside the Thathana-alinyaung and Thathana-wuntha monasteries and shots were fired.
Back on the streets, smaller numbers of mostly male protestors continued to confront the security forces in Rangoon, shouting slogans such as “General [Aung San] did not give you training in order to kill the people!” “We don’t want military government” and “May the people who killed monks be struck down by lighting!” In Mandalay, on September 29 up to 1000 monks and over 10,000 people continued marches, closely watched by troops, police and
government thugs. In Sittwe, about 50 monks and 300 civilians marched for around half an hour and were threatened by armed troops, and in Pakokku around 200 monks led 2000 civilians in a peaceful two-hour march to Thihoshin Pagoda starting at 2:30pm that was not broken up by the authorities. During the march they also chanted slogans such as those in Rangoon. They prayed at the pagoda before dispersing. To the south of Pakokku, at Yenanchaung, around 200 monks followed by a few thousand supporters marched around the town chanting slogans. Many of the monks were from the Shwedaung Pali University, which is under the control of one of the 47 top government-approved monks of the Maha Sangha Nayaka Council, U Tezaniya.
Hospitals were ordered to refuse medical treatment for persons apparently injured due to the crackdown on the protestors and also persons receiving treatment were transferred into army custody. According to DVB, 48-year-old U Than Aung died after being taken into custody after protests in Rangoon on September 27; he was reportedly injured at the time he was taken to the interrogation centre, but was denied medical attention. Similarly, according to a released protestor, a young man from Thingankyun in Rangoon, Ko Mya Than Htaik, had been taken to the GTI where he was denied medical treatment although he had been shot. Armed security personnel were also patrolling hospitals, guarding the entrances to emergency treatment wards and obliging staff to inform them of persons being admitted with injuries. At the Rangoon General Hospital, six persons who had been receiving treatment for wounds, including Mya Than Htaik from Thingankyun, were taken away to an unknown location by soldiers on October 3; over a week later their families had still not found out their whereabouts. In some places, such as Myinchan and Taungthar townships in Mandalay, officials were rumoured to have sent orders to hospitals that they not treat monks who were continuing to boycott the military regime.
By October 1, while arrests continued there were also some persons being released, revealing something of the atrocious conditions in which protestors had been held: crammed into otherwise empty rooms with no washrooms or toilets and virtually no food. One detainee said that she had been kept with around 200 women in the GTI and that around 3000 people were kept there. Some had died in custody and monks had been forcibly disrobed and thrown in with everyone else, she said. Another, Daw Khin Mar Lar—an NLD member in Mandalay who had apparently been taken into custody in an attempt to get at her husband—said the conditions under which she had been kept, first at Police Battalion 4 and then at Ohboe Prison, were appalling. She described the little food given as consisting of nothing more than rice soup, which stank and was full of gravel and dirt and that “even dogs wouldn’t eat”. At least one of her co-inmates, Daw Thin Thin, was aged more than 70. Khin Mar Lar was released only having signed a pledge that she would not cause any trouble and having been threatened that she would receive a long compounded jail term and her family members also would be taken away if she did otherwise. As more persons were released they all indicated that they had been obliged to sign similar documents. Others said that they had been pressured to testify against monks and other detainees in exchange for being freed.
Another feature of the authorities’ response that emerged at the start of October was to take family members of wanted persons as hostages. Among them was almost the entire immediate family of U Gambira, one of the monks wanted in connection with the September protests. His younger brother Ko Aung Kyaw Kyaw was taken from a street in Rangoon on October 17; another younger brother Ko Win Zaw was taken earlier. His mother and a sister were detained in Meikhtila, upper Burma,
on October 16. At last report, his father and another sister were in hiding. The monk was finally captured in November. The abbot of the Thitsamandai monastery in Gontalabaung village was also reportedly arrested on October 2 and held to be exchanged for his brother, who is also a monk, whose monastery in Mingaladone, Rangoon, was raided during the crackdown on protests.
Many managed to evade arrest, at least for a time, among them many of the women organisers of the protests. They included Ma Khin Hta Yi, whose told VOA on October 23 that after almost two months her family had had almost no contact with her, but that she had not lost hope.
One monk said that, “Lord Buddha told that between dhamma [law, truth] and adhamma [its opposite], dhamma alone will succeed.” Knowing that, one gets a little bit of strength back, isn’t it so? What our sisters have done [during the protests] is good. Goodness, dhamma succeeds. With that we can gain the strength to carry on.
At the end of the month, the ICRC still had been unable to obtain access to those who had been captured and held, despite repeated requests. Meanwhile, more persons and monks were being brought in even as others were being released. Among them was reported to be a 44-year-old man suffering from mental illness, Ko Thein Aye of Insein, apparently taken on October 12 because he was in a place where the authorities had searched unsuccessfully for someone who had been involved in organising the protests and needed an arrestee. His family, like others, was told that he would just be taken for a few hours and returned after that, but over three weeks later he was still missing.
There were also continuing reports of deaths, apparently in custody or under other mysterious circumstances. An eyewitness speaking to VOA in a broadcast of October 8 claimed that many people came to see the corpses of three monks under a bridge on the Kamarkyi Stream in Thaketa Township of Rangoon during the previous Friday, October 5. After a crowd gathered, the police arrived, cleared the area and took the bodies away, she said.
In accordance with which law?
By mid-October the state was beginning to concoct court cases against persons accused of offences over the protests in order to pretend that there existed an element of its original “law and order” rationale in its agenda. According to a report in the New Light of Myanmar of 9 November 2007 on the latest visit of the United Nations special envoy to Burma, Ibrahim Gambari,
During August and September when the nation saw protest marches, the government had to tackle in accordance with the law the incidents in which some people violated the law and the protest marches were turning to unrest and violence. Unavoidably, the government had to call in those who got involved in the marches, some of whom were artless people, for questioning. Now, all those who were not relevant to the violent acts and violation of law have been released. And those who are [suspected] of the violent and terrorist acts are being questioned…
Thus protestors such as Naw Ohn Hla resurfaced to be superficially treated “in accordance with the law”. Ohn Hla had earlier risen to prominence by virtue of her involvement in the “Tuesday Prayer Group”, which met every week at the Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon to pray silently for the release of political
prisoners. Throughout 2007 security forces and others acting on their behalf, including pagoda trustees, constantly harassed her and the other women involved in the group. On one occasion the officials childishly doused the area where they customarily gathered (the Tuesday corner of the pagoda) with dirty soapy water. Ohn Hla was herself libelled in articles printed in private journals on the orders of the government, which alluded to her as a prostitute. Nonetheless, she and the other women kept coming to pray.
After the August 15 fuel price rise that precipitated the nationwide protests, Ohn Hla was among the first to protest and be taken into custody “for questioning”. Like everyone else, she was taken without regard to any provision of law or criminal procedure. And like most others, nobody knew where she was held, for how long she would be held or the conditions of her confinement.
At an October 12 court hearing in Hmawbi, just north of Rangoon, she was placed under a restricting order in accordance with the 1961 Restriction and Bond Act. She was denied a lawyer and the only witnesses were the township police chief, her village tract council chairman and an official underneath him. At the end of the brief trial, Judge Aye Aye Mu instructed that she cannot leave the township for the next year without seeking a permit, or reside in another part of the country, and must report to the local police station once every seven days.
Even leaving aside the process by which she was brought into the court and the most obvious procedural absurdities, the order itself was sheer nonsense; devoid of legality. The two subsections of the act under which Ohn Hla was charged were specifically for habitual offenders and their abettors or someone evidently about to commit a felony. But the judge’s reasons for placing her under the order were that she
has “no fixed address” in her village of registration and has “no fixed occupation”. In fact, she had explained to the court how she had come to reside in another township and be placed on a guest register there, and two prosecution witnesses acknowledged that she works as a small goods vendor in her home village, and the register is both for the purposes of residency as well as trading— as if any of this was significant anyhow. Indeed, were these criteria applied evenly across the population of Burma, millions would probably have to be brought before courts for similar orders to be passed against them.
The treatment of Ohn Hla, although legally devoid of merit, was relatively benign. In many other cases those labelled as ringleaders of protests have been tried under a provision of the antiquated Penal Code, section 505, according to which,
Whoever makes, publishes or circulates any statement, rumour or report… (b) with intent to cause, or which is likely to cause, fear or alarm to the public or to any section of the public whereby any person may be induced to commit an offence against the State or against the public tranquility… shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to two years, or with [a] fine, or with both.
It has been a characteristic of the criminal injustice system in Burma under the current administration that virtually anything can be found to fall within the parameters of section 505(b), from the making of complaints about forced labour to the watching of a wedding video of a general’s daughter. But in the aftermath of the protests this section has been overused to the point of absurdity, suggesting a policy dictate rather than any kind of legal process, no matter how feigned.
For instance, on October 19, the township court in Katha, Sagaing Division, sentenced National League for Democracy (NLD) members U Myint Kyi (son of U Ba Zaw) and U Zaw Lin (a.k.a. U Maung Maung) to two years with hard labour for their alleged part in the protests. According to Police Superintendent Myint Zaw, the two men held a meeting with others at Myint Kyi’s house on September 25 to plan for a protest in the town the next day. The court heard that the march lasted for a half an hour and involved around 50 monks and over 400 residents who
apparently went not in order to press for changes in their society but rather in order “to cause alarm to the public”. The accused maintained that they were not organisers of the protest and anyway Zaw Lin did not even attend it, but Judge Ne Aung does not appear to have considered their testimony as like other such judgments in Burma’s courts, his lacks evidence of any specific reasoning behind the verdict.
In a related case, on October 18, the court in nearby Indaw sentenced Shwe Pein (a.k.a. Htay Naing Lin) and Chan Aung (a.k.a. Nyi Htay) also to two years with hard labour for allegedly having had contact with the defendants in Katha and having communicated to short wave radio stations abroad about goings on there.
Interestingly, Deputy Police Chief Kyaw Htay used telephone records and called an official from the government communications department to testify against the two—who are members of the Human Rights Defenders and Promoters (HRDP) group. Others in that group have been targetted in similar legal actions thoughout 2007. Judge Daw Khin Myat Tar concluded that the defendants had “sent news to foreign broadcasters with intent to injure State tranquility and the rule of law by causing alarm to the public” and passed her sentence accordingly.
U Min Aung, a father of three small children, was brought into the district court of Thandwe (upon the western seaboard) facing the same charge on October 17. Min Aung—who was apparently targetted for having worked on a number of forced labour cases in Arakan State and having had contact with the International Labour Organisation’s office in Rangoon—was sentenced for his alleged involvement in protests in his hometown of Taunggut on September 26 and 27, although in his defence he maintained that he had been away from the area until October 12, the day before he was arrested. When Min Aung complained that he had been denied a lawyer, in violation of his human rights, Judge Daw Hsaung Tin added another two years to his sentence for contempt of court, making it nine-and-a-half years in total. Later, it seems that a lawyer was able to get the case reviewed and the sentence brought back down to two-and-a-half years, despite having been refused permission to get copies of the court’s judgment.
Reports of identikit charges, investigations and convictions have come from all over the country. For instance, the Yoma 3 news service (Thailand) said that on November 7 Judge Maung Maung at a court in Pyi, lower Burma, sentenced two other HRDP members—Ko Zaw Htun and Ko Thet Oo—to two years each under 505(b), along with a disrobed monk, U Pandita. Similarly, according to the Burmese service of Radio Free Asia, courts in Kachin State, on the border with China, sentenced NLD members U Ba Myint of Banmaw and U Ne Win of Myitkyina (the state deputy chairman) to—yet again—two years apiece on November 9. Ba Myint was reportedly tried in a closed court, without the knowledge of his family, while Ne Win’s wife only learnt of the charge against him when she went to the court on the afternoon of November 8; the next morning he was given 15 minutes to hire a lawyer (without success), after which the judge tried the case and passed the judgment that evening.
Ko Kyauk Hke, an artist living in Aunglan, Magwe Division, was on September 30 watching satellite television footage of the crackdown on protests in Rangoon at a street-side video stall when he leapt up and yelled, “Long live Theravada Buddhism!” He was arrested shortly thereafter, likewise charged under 505(b), refused the right to a lawyer and sentenced to two years after the prosecution accused him of also shouting anti-government slogans. Similarly, Ko Aye Cho in Pyawbwe township, Mandalay was reportedly sentenced to six years’ imprisonment under the same section and others at the end of October for having accused USDA members in his area of plotting to kill activists.
Analgous cases have proceeded against two NLD party members in Monyin, U Kyaw Maung and U Hpe Sein, who are aged 60 and 74 respectively. And according to a human rights lawyer, others facing or having been sentenced in 505(b) cases include U Myint Oo, the NLD secretary in Magwe; U Thar Cho in Yenanchaung, Htun Htun Nyein in Chauk, and schoolteacher U Htay Win in Natmauk, all also in Magwe; and Ko Saw Win, an NLD organiser in Hinthada (Irrawaddy delta) and Maung Khaing Win, who offered water to protestors in the same township. The lawyer only came to learn of the last two by accident, as he was lodging papers concerning a separate case.
Clearly, it is not the persons who have been forced to defend themselves in these shabby show trials who have “intent to cause fear or alarm to the public” but rather, the persons behind the policy of 505(b) convictions and two-year sentences for anyone who might have been getting up the authorities’ collective nose, without regard to the legality of how they came to be in custody, how they came to be in the courts or how they came to be convicted. It is Burma’s authorities, not its citizens, who are responsible for the fear and alarm that persists in their country.
The fantastic irony of all of these cases is that while the military regime rails against neocolonialists and the supposed interference of others in its internal affairs, it is using a colonial- era law in its desperate attempts to crush opponents to its unsavoury rule in exactly the same manner as did the British officials who devised and implemented the law over a century ago. The provision is the same one that exists until today in the Indian Penal Code (1860), which can be found in one form or another throughout the Commonwealth; however, despite its persistence on the statute books, nowhere is the section so shamelessly and blatantly manipulated for purposes entirely contrary to notions of justice than in Burma today.
Some cases were retried or persons released despite having been given lengthy sentences. For instance, Ko Soe Win, a young man who had held a solo protest in Taunggut, Arakan State on September 11 was charged with insulting religion (Penal Code sn. 295A; by virtue of his calling for Snr-Gen. Than Shwe, the head of state, to be excommunicated) and under 505(b). He was not able to meet with a lawyer or family members and on October 11 was after a brief hearing sentenced to four years in jail. However, on October 25 he was reportedly retried and the conviction overturned.
Conclusion
At time of writing, new protests by monks were again beginning in a number of parts of the country. They are accompanied by many other reports of continued acts of resistance and shows of public dissatisfaction with the regime. Where all of these lead, as in the case of the August and September rallies, remains to be seen. However, the persistent shows of defiance should come as no surprise to anyone other than those persons who have foolishly asserted that what happened in Burma was somehow not the doing of the people there themselves but rather a consequence of the foreign policies of “big powers” and their geopolitics.
Every society has its threshold, the point after which it will no longer tolerate things going on as before. The threshold for people in Burma is much higher than that of many other societies today, and thus they have put up with a lot more for a lot longer than might otherwise have been expected. This does not mean that they have not in the past fought back, but rather that their forms of resistance have not attracted much outside interest, nor seriously threatened the army’s hold on power.
But it is no longer possible for people there to use ordinary methods to alleviate their problems. Clearly, the conditions under which they are being forced to live have become intolerable. The protests are a consequence of the threshold being reached, not engineering from the outside. The struggle that is on now in Burma is ultimately a struggle for survival.
The struggle for survival of Burma’s people is by corollary a struggle for survival of its dictators, whose response to the protests has throughout been characterised by lawlessness: the complete departure from not only international law but also from those domestic standards to which they pretend to subscribe.
Against this backdrop, the struggle can also be seen as a struggle against the un-rule of law. The demands are for both rice and rationality: each depends upon an end to the arbitrary rule under which people in Burma have been needlessly obliged to subsist for over four decades. And justice—in every sense of the word—will come to their country no other way.
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