Monks March to Laureate's Home

In Burma, Strands Of Opposition Unite

Associated Press
Sunday, September 23, 2007

RANGOON, Burma, Sept. 22 -- Hundreds of Buddhist monks marched past barricades to the home of Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, increasing pressure on the military government by symbolically uniting their growing protest movement with the icon of Burma's long struggle for democracy.

The two strands of opposition came together in Rangoon after police unexpectedly let more than 500 monks and other protesters through a roadblock.

Suu Kyi has been seen by only a handful of guards, servants and her doctors for more than four years.

Monks have been marching for five days in Rangoon, Burma's largest city, and around the country as a month of protests against economic problems under the junta have ballooned into the biggest grass-roots challenge to its rule in two decades.

The government has been handling the well-respected monks' disciplined but defiant protests gingerly, aware that forcibly breaking them up in the predominantly Buddhist country could cause public outrage.

The monks stopped briefly in front of Suu Kyi's house and prayed before leaving, said witnesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being harassed by the authorities.

The part of University Avenue where Suu Kyi's house is located has been closed to traffic since Sept. 17. After the monks passed, the road was closed again.

"Today is extraordinary. We walked past lay disciple Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's house today. We are pleased and glad to see her looking fit and well," a monk said to about 200 people at Sule Pagoda in Rangoon. "Daw" is an honorific title.

"She came out to the gate and paid obeisance to us and later waved at the crowd when we left," said the monk, who did not give his name.

Photos posted on the Web site of Mizzima News, run by exiled Burmese journalists in India, show a crowd gathered outside the gate of Suu Kyi's home, with uniformed security men standing in front of it. Suu Kyi cannot be distinguished, though reports posted on the site and others said she was wearing yellow and broke into tears.

Suu Kyi, 62, has been under detention continuously since May 2003, when a convoy carrying her on a political trip through northern Burma was ambushed by pro-junta thugs. She is the leader of the National League for Democracy party, which won a 1990 general election but was not allowed to take power by the military.

The latest protest movement began Aug. 19 after the government raised fuel prices but is rooted in pent-up dissatisfaction with the repressive military government. Using arrests and intimidation, the government had managed to keep demonstrations limited in size and impact, although they gained new life when the monks joined.

On Saturday, a monks' organization for the first time urged the public to join in protesting "evil military despotism."

"In order to banish the common enemy evil regime from Burmese soil forever, united masses of people need to join hands with the united clergy forces," the All Burma Monks Alliance said in a statement.

Little is known about the group or its membership, but its communiques have spread widely by word of mouth and through opposition media in exile.