| THE Anglican Archbishop of Burma (Myanmar), the Most Revd Samuel San Si Htay, said this week that he was praying for the nation, as mounting protests, in which the country’s Buddhist monks were the main rallying-point, led to a violent crackdown by the country’s long-established military junta.
Late on Tuesday, the ninth day of protest, it appeared that the junta’s forces had finally begun to use violence to break up the protests. Monasteries were reportedly ringed, and there were reports that at least one monk had been killed.
British embassy sources reported that at a march by thousands of demonstrators in Rangoon, at least 100 monks had been beaten and arrested. Demonstrators were being herded on to trucks.
On Wednesday, India, which has close relations with the Burmese junta, urged a peaceful resolution and a more broad-based political reform in the country.
The protests began in Rangoon and Mandalay after the junta raised fuel prices.
Archbishop San Si Htay told Ecumenical News International in a phone interview on Tuesday that he intended to meet Roman Catholic bishops to discuss the situation. “We pray for peace and the future of the country,” he said.
The Christian population was “extremely vulnerable”, said the Bishop of Winchester, the Rt Revd Michael Scott-Joynt, whose diocese has been linked with Burma since the 1870s. He warned on Tuesday that the Churches’ position was “very fragile”.
Christians formed less than five per cent of the population. Half were Baptists, and most of the rest were divided evenly between the Anglican and RC Churches. “Clearly, the situation is critical for the Burmese people, and therefore within that for the tiny Christian population and the still tinier Anglican minority,” the Bishop said.
The general secretary of the Christian Conference of Asia, Prawate Khid-arn, in a letter to the Myanmar Council of Churches, wrote: “The open dissent and the bold marches of peoples across the cities is a clear sign that people are not willing to conform to the might of the military dictators. The liberative spirituality of Buddhism and other religions is a positive non-violent counter-force to transform the principalities, powers, and demonic forces which have overtaken your country for decades.”
A message of support came also from the general secretary of the Council of Churches in Malaysia, the Revd Hermen Shastri, who said that he hoped the demonstrations would lead to a “new era of democracy and peace” in Myanmar.
“It is moving to see how religious people, especially Buddhist monks and nuns, are at the forefront in the struggle,” he wrote. “We know that your council and many church leaders have joined the forces for democratic change to oppose the long dictatorship of the military junta.”
On Tuesday, Gordon Brown called on the EU to impose new sanctions if the regime “makes the wrong choices” in dealing with the protest. Britain could act unilaterally if the EU did not.
President Bush, addressing the United Nations on Tuesday, also announced new US sanctions.
The military took power in Myanmar in 1988 after a mass pro-democracy movement emerged under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi. She had been moved to prison after years of house arrest, it was reported on Wednesday. |
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