Myanmar Marches Growing

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The New York Sun

YANGON, Myanmar – Some 100,000 anti-government protesters led by a phalanx of Buddhist monks marched today through Yangon, the largest crowd to demonstrate in Myanmar’s biggest city since a 1988 pro-democracy uprising that was brutally crushed by the military.

As the march headed toward the Defense Ministry’s offices along a straight stretch of road, the back of the crowd could not be seen from the front. Monks and activists estimated the turnout was about 100,000 though an exact count was difficult.

The march — launched from the Shwedagon pagoda, the country’s most sacred shrine — gathered participants as it winded its way through Yangon’s streets. Some 20,000 monks took the lead, with onlookers joining in on what had been billed as a day of general protest.

The march covered at least 5 miles in its first few hours, passing by the old campus of Rangoon University, a hotbed of protest in past times. Students were seen joining today’s march.

Protests began on August 19 as a movement against economic hardship, after the government sharply raised fuel prices. But arrests and intimidation kept demonstrations small and scattered until the monks entered the fray.

Yesterday, about 20,000 people including thousands of monks filled the streets in Yangon, stepping up their confrontation with authorities by chanting support for detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The increasingly confrontational tone of the anti-government protesters has raised both expectations of possible political change and fear that the military might forcefully stamp out the demonstrations, as it did in 1988.


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