Word: junta
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...junta's response comes in the evening, when Brigadier General Thura Myint Maung, Minister of Religious Affairs, is quoted on state television as promising action against the monks. Within hours, trucks with loudspeakers are cruising Rangoon's dimly lit streets, announcing a curfew and threatening to arrest anyone who marches with the monks...
...crackdown starts slowly. Several well-known democracy activists are arrested overnight. Aung Way goes into hiding. Guiltily, I retrieve his poem. "We want freedom," it reads. "We want friendship between our army and our people." The New Light of Myanmar, a junta newspaper, blames the violence on "hot-blooded monks" who "are jealous of national development and stability...
Only a handful of monks escape the junta's dragnet to join that day's demonstration near the Sule Pagoda. But there are thousands of protesters when I arrive. More military trucks pull up at the intersection, and the troops inside noisily cock their rifles. The crowd tenses as one. Seconds later, there are more smoke bombs, and we are running for our lives...
...have a sense that the junta's victory may yet prove Pyrrhic. The brutal crackdown has shattered the relationship between the generals and the monks. The regime spent years building new pagodas and donating alms to cultivate its image as protector of the faith. It can hardly claim that role now. The assault on a revered institution may yet cause divisions in the army's ranks. "Soldiers are humans," says a Burmese analyst with close ties to the military. "They have families. They have monks among their relatives." Already stories are being told of monks damning to hell the soldiers...
...that happens, what can the world do? There is already unprecedented international pressure on Burma, although its impact on this isolated and xenophobic regime is questionable. While I was in Rangoon, U.N. Special Envoy Ibrahim Gambari met with both Suu Kyi (twice) and junta chief Than Shwe, but Gambari's efforts look unlikely to kick-start a dialogue between the two. Similarly, China's influence over Burma--and its willingness to use it--is probably exaggerated. Its U.N. Ambassador, Wang Guangya, has characterized Burma's troubles as "basically internal...