September 20, 2007	Thursday	Ramazan 07, 1428

YANGON: Thousands of Buddhist monks marched through the Myanmar city of Sittwe on Wednesday, a day after soldiers fired tear gas and warning shots to scatter a similar protest against the ruling generals, a witness said.

“At least 2,000 monks are marching very peacefully, just chanting prayers and holy scriptures. No slogans, no demands,” one witness in the northwestern coastal city told newsmen.

Several thousand people watched but did not join in on orders from the monks — perhaps mindful of the warning implied in the junta's rare admission it had used tear gas and live ammunition to disperse Tuesday's march through the city.

“Some protesters, including six monks holding sticks and swords, hit the officials with their weapons,” the New Light of Myanmar, one of the regime's main mouthpieces, said on Wednesday.

“The protesters became very violent. So in order to control situation, the officials threw a teargas bomb into the group and opened fire in the air to threaten them.”

Throughout four weeks of sporadic demonstrations, the military has been at pains to keep itself in the background, although soldiers did fire warning shots at one monk protest in the central town of Pakokku two weeks ago.

That action by the army — held responsible for the deaths of up to 3,000 people when it crushed the 1988 uprising — caused hundreds of young monks to seize government officials the next day and torch four of their vehicles.

Instead of using troops to break up protests, the generals have favoured civilian gangs and members of its feared Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) social network.

MONKS ON THE MARCH: Although on Tuesday's marches fell far short of a nationwide boycott, monks marched in seven towns and cities, including Yangon, the commercial centre of the country formerly known as Burma and its former capital.

Burma was one of Asia's brightest prospects when it won independence from Britain in 1948. After 45 years of unbroken military rule and economic mismanagement, it is now one of the region's poorest countries.

In Yangon, authorities closed the famed Shwedagon Pagoda, the nation's holiest shrine, minutes before hundreds of monks arrived for the formal launch of a campaign to refuse to accept alms from anyone connected to the regime.

Such a boycott is taken extremely seriously in the devoutly Buddhist country. Without such rites, a Buddhist loses all chance of attaining nirvana, or release from the cycle of rebirth.

Plainclothes police and USDA members shadowed the monks along their route, taking photographs and video, but there was no trouble and no arrests, witnesses said.

Monks launched a similar religious boycott in 1990 shortly after the generals refused to honour the results of a general election they had lost by a landslide.

Protesters at Chinese diplomatic missions across the United States urged Beijing to use its influence to get Myanmar to free political prisoners and end violence against minorities.

“This regime has survived to this day because of Chinese government support — financial, diplomatic and military,” said Aung Din of the US Campaign for Burma in Washington.—Reuters