As many as 100,000 anti-government protesters led by a phalanx of Buddhist monks marched on Monday 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.
From the front of the march, witnesses could see a one-mile stretch of eight-lane road was filled with people.
Some participants said there were several hundred thousand marchers in their ranks, but an international aid agency official with employees monitoring the crowd estimated said the size was well over 50,000 and approaching 100,000. It was the latest in a series of protests that began on August 19 as a movement against economic hardship in the Southeast Asian country after the government sharply raised fuel prices. But arrests and intimidation kept demonstrations small and scattered until the monks entered the fray.
The usually iron-fisted junta has so far kept minimal security at the protests, and diplomats and analysts said Myanmar's military rulers were showing unexpected restraint because of pressure from the country’s key trading partner and diplomatic ally, China.
The march kicked off, like the previous ones, at the Shwedagon pagoda, a historical centre for political movements as well as the country’s most sacred religious shrine. Some 20,000 monks took the lead, with onlookers joining in on what had been billed as a day of general protest. In the central city of Mandalay, meanwhile, 500 to 600 monks set off shortly after noon on their own protest march.
The monks, who took over a faltering protest movement from political activists, already had managed to bring people into the streets in numbers not seen since the 1988 pro-democracy uprising snuffed out by the army at a cost of thousands of lives.
On Sunday, 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.
A Southeast Asian diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity as a matter of protocol, said the regime is under pressure from China to avoid a crackdown just as its larger neighbour has pressured it to speed up other democratic changes.
“The Myanmar government is tolerating the protesters and not taking any action against the monks because of pressure from China,” the diplomat said.
“Beijing is to host the next summer’s Olympic Games. Everyone knows that China is the major supporter of the junta so if government takes any action it will affect the image of China,” he added.
