버마: 민주.. 투쟁 #3

JUNTA PROTESTS RETURN
Burmese Monks Venture Back onto Streets (Spiegel, 10.31)

Last month, protesting monks in Burma were being beaten up and detained by the thousands. Now they're are back at it -- in smaller numbers, but with equal conviction.

For the first time since last month's bloody crackdown by the military regime, monks have ventured back onto the streets of Burma. On Tuesday, more than 100 chanting and praying monks marched through the central Burmese town of Pakkoku, about 630 km north-west of Yangon.

People who witnessed the march, which lasted about half an hour, said the monks did not make any overt political statements but that the rally was clearly in defiance of the junta.

Pakkoku, a centre of Buddhist learning, was the scene of clashes between soldiers and monks on Sept. 5, when soldiers had violent confrontations with 600 demonstrating monks.

Since mid-August, hundreds of thousands of Burmese, among them many students and monks, had been protesting rising fuel prices in peaceful demonstrations against the military regime. With the brutal crackdown that began in Pakkoku and continued for weeks, the domestic crisis entered international headlines. Since then, public gatherings of monks have been prohibited, and many monasteries remain deserted.

While the Burmese government claims that only 10 people died in the clashes, diplomats and dissidents set the figure much higher. The Norway-based opposition news organization the Democratic Voice of Burma has estimated that 138 were killed in the violence and around 6,000 detained...