Word: shwedagon
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...much of late September, the road to the eastern gateway of Rangoon's revered Shwedagon pagoda was a sea of maroon and saffron robes, as hundreds of Buddhist monks gathered to march in protest against Burma's military government...
...weeks after the junta brutally cracked down on the pro-democracy demonstrations, the small monasteries that line both sides of the road are mostly locked and empty, while wooden barricades and bales of rusted barbed wire that police used to seal off Shwedagon are stacked on the pavement. Police and soldiers armed with automatic weapons sit on stools outside the mostly silent monasteries. More are stationed at the entrance of the hilltop temple, the spiritual center of Burmese Buddhism. As many as a thousand monks lived and studied at these small monasteries in the shadow of Shwedagon. But troops...
...When the military and police moved to crush the demonstrators, they first went after the monks. Under cover of darkness, say several sources who did not want their names used, doors of monasteries were kicked in and the monks around Shwedagon, including some nuns, were bundled onto trucks and taken away. When asked where the monks had gone, one 30-year-old man who was at Shwedagon in the early days of the protests puts his wrists together in the sign of locked handcuffs. According to Burma's state-run paper, The New Light of Myanmar, raids on 18 monasteries...
...Shwedagon's eastern gate is locked and guarded by soldiers and riot police, who are confronted by hundreds of angry monks and students. It is around noon, and the battle for the Shwedagon is about to begin. There are explosions--of smoke bombs, meant to shock and disorient--and the riot police charge, striking the protesters with canes. The monks and students fight back, and soon there is the unmistakable crackle of live ammunition; the soldiers are shooting above our heads. "They are not Buddhists," rages Thurein, 24, a student, who is clutching half a brick and running from...
...crackdown has worked. There are small, sporadic protests but no marches. The sacred rallying points, the Shwedagon and Sule pagodas, are locked and guarded. Everywhere there are troops arresting and beating people...