Word: shwedagon
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...battle for Shwedagon began in ferocious noonday heat. The authorities had locked the gates of the pagoda, Rangoon's most famous landmark, by mid-morning to prevent the monks who had led the weeklong demonstrations against Burma's military rulers from gathering. Police and soldiers guarded the entrances. The eastern gate of Shwedagon is where thousands of monks would otherwise exit to start their march into downtown Rangoon. But today, hundreds of soldiers and riot police blocked their...
Saffron robes usually evoke spiritual calm. But for Burma's military leaders, a surprise gathering of monks is anything but peaceful. On Wednesday in the commercial capital Rangoon, hundreds of Buddhist clergy gathered around the nation's beloved Shwedagon pagoda to protest August price hikes that are pummeling an already impoverished populace. More than a thousand monks also rallied in other parts of the country, their daily alms routes turned into paths of protest...
...leading attraction is Rangoon (Yangon). Giant stupas sparkling in the sun have captivated newcomers for centuries. The mesmeric gilded domes of Sule and Shwedagon pagodas tower above the capital. Dawn and dusk walks, past hundreds of kneeling devotees as plumes of incense waft over their prayers, are unforgettable...
...takeover by General Saw Maung, who took power in a coup last September. Since then, more students and other protesters have been arrested or shot. Government employees deemed sympathetic to the democracy movement are being purged from their jobs. Troops are everywhere, even in the compound of the Shwedagon Pagoda, Burma's holiest shrine. "They have stripped away the pseudosocialist camouflage that ((former President)) Ne Win put over the army in the 1970s," says a Western observer in Rangoon. "It has always been a military government. Now it's a nakedly military government...
...protests for almost a year, only to be quickly suppressed by security forces under the command of Sein Lwin, then the party's secretary-general. Ever strengthening tremors began two weeks ago, as larger and larger crowds, first of students, then of all manner of citizens, gathered at the Shwedagon Pagoda, the splendid golden shrine in North Rangoon, and the Sule Pagoda in the center of the city...