Saffron Revolution-burma Monks

14 Agenda

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2009 SUNDAY MORNING POST

Monks’ path of resistance

T

“

hey kicked and beat my face after every question. They were wearing army boots. At that time, I knew only to contemplate the teachings of the Buddha, to concentrate on them because I could not bear any more. I knew I was dying because if they did this repeatedly, I would die soon,” says monk Ashin Panna Siri. He pauses, remembering how he was arrested for helping to organise Myanmar’s 2007 mass pro-democracy uprisings. The protests, led by the Buddhist monks, were brutally put down by the military regime in a clampdown that began two years ago yesterday. After the crackdown he went into hiding, but was caught and tortured in a police interrogation centre in the Myanmese city of Monywa the following month. Officers from Myanmar’s military intelligence unit, who wanted him to admit being involved in the protests, demanded he disrobe. He refused to buckle, but a confession mattered little to the regime. The 28-year-old was convicted of illegally possessing foreign currency and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment with hard labour in January last year. After serving seven months in Monywa jail, he was moved to Kale prison before finally being transferred to Lin Dan hard labour camp near Myanmar’s western border with India. He was beaten, starved, chained and forced to work repairing a highway. Meals were meagre. Prisoners were fed rice mixed with rat faeces. Fearing he would not survive, he escaped on foot through mountainous jungle terrain into India a year ago. He was the only leader of the All Burma Monks Alliance (Abma), an underground group that helped mastermind the protests, to escape from detention. When about 150,000 monks spilled onto the streets of Myanmar’s cities and towns to demand the regime ease crushing poverty and political repression, momentum grew and protests soon spread. The generals knew the protests must be halted to save their skins. The ruling State Peace and Development Council imposed martial law and deployed thousands of riot police and soldiers, who opened fire on the peaceful protesters. About 31 people were killed. Monasteries were raided. More than 4,000 people were arrested, including fellow Abma leader U Gambira, 30. As the junta continued to restrict the monks’ freedoms, Abma, along with other pro-democracy groups, splintered. Although the monks were forced to scatter, they have re-formed and forged new links with student organisations and political groups – including the main opposition party the National League for Democracy (NLD) – and are planning fresh mass demonstrations. Ashin Panna Siri still maintains links with his Abma colleagues in Myanmar. “We are planning mass protests. We are still discussing whether we should do mass protests, because if the next movement comes, how can we take power and manage power?” he said from his new home in New Delhi. “I cannot say whether there will be mass protests or not, but we will do something. Suppose the NLD takes responsibility; we can make a mass movement day or night.” The gravity of his words should not be underestimated; the power Myanmar’s 400,000 monks to mobilise the country’s 55 million people is beyond doubt. Monks

Buddhists monks, protected by supporters, march down the street in Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, during the ‘Saffron Revolution’ two years ago to protest against military rule. Photo: AFP

Myanmar’s sangha may rise up again two years after junta crushed protests. Rajeshree Sisodia reports normally shy away from politics and have no direct influence over the junta, yet what they say and do matters in the devoutly Buddhist country. Historically, monks also have the spiritual authority to grant, and take away, legitimacy from the country’s rulers. They must intervene if the wellbeing of the people or the faith is in danger. The junta released about 100 political prisoners this month. There is also rising speculation that it is planning to install an interim government in the weeks to come, to mollify the monks, and stall the likelihood of further demonstrations. The decision by some monks – though, importantly, not all – to protest two years ago is not unusual. Monks led peaceful opposition against British colonial rule of what was then Burma in the 1920s. The military regime also tortured dissident members of the clergy from the 1970s to the 1990s. But the junta sank to a new low with its systematic attacks on monks, nuns and monasteries in 2007. And its refusal to publicly apologise has not been forgiven. Dr Ingrid Jordt, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, in Milwaukee, and a specialist on Buddhism in Myanmar, says this refusal to repent, coupled with growing political repression and poverty, means conditions for further protests are ripe. “Another monks’ uprising may very well be on the horizon,” she said. “It’s a tinderbox. Grievances against the SPDC following the 2007 ‘Saffron Revolution’

remain widespread within the sangha [monkhood] and the Buddhist populace, including many members of the military. “Theravada Buddhists consider shedding the blood of a monk an unforgivable act and the SPDC has lost all political legitimacy in Buddhist terms. This time, if the monks rise up, there will almost certainly be immediate and co-ordinated participation from a broad segment of the religious order and also a broader segment of the lay population.” More than 5,000 monks in Myanmar are

in hiding, missing, have left the sangha or are in prison. Another 300 fled to India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bangladesh and the West. U Pyinya Zawta, 48, is one of the exiled monks rebuilding his life in the United States. He is a veteran of the 1988 mass prodemocracy protests in Myanmar, when millions of demonstrators protested against the dictatorship’s one-party rule and a crumbling economy. He has spent a decade in prison after being convicted of prodemocracy activities – first in 1990 and again in 1997.

The prison system taught me how to become more systematic in rebelling against the government. It gave me a kind of determination that we are doing the right thing

............................................................... U Pyinya Zawta, exiled Myanmese monk

U Pyinya Zawta says: “What I realised from going into prison was that Myanmese people are suffering more than I imagined, so going into prison made me even more committed to change the political system in Burma. The prison system taught me how to become more systematic in rebelling against the government. It gave me a kind of determination that we are doing the right thing.” As one of Abma’s senior leaders, he was also a linchpin in the protests two years ago, helping to decide where and how the demonstrations in Yangon, formerly Rangoon, would take place and how to monitor similar protests across the country. But when the junta announced in September 2007 that he was on a government wanted list, he knew he had to flee Myanmar. After three months in hiding in the south of the country, he headed east on foot to the Thai border town of Mae Sot. He arrived in the US in September last year. U Pyinya Zawta had good reason to fear arrest. The Resistance of the Monks: Buddhism and Activism in Burma, a report released last week by Human Rights Watch, reveals the junta is continuing to clamp down further to ensure elections set for early next year are free of trouble. It says: “The government’s crackdown on the monks continues to this day, with oppressive surveillance, continued arrests of monks suspected of involvement in political activities, and many monks undergoing secret and unfair trials and receiving draconian sentences.” Despite living in exile, U Pyinya Zawta’s

commitment to helping the people of Myanmar has not faltered. As Abma’s executive-director-in-exile, he campaigns to raise awareness in the West about the plight of Myanmar’s imprisoned monks, provides support to exiled monks and liaises with Abma and other pro-democracy groups in Myanmar. The 2007 uprisings started after the junta increased prices for liquified natural gas and diesel. People already struggling to survive faced further huge price rises for public transport and food. Two years on, the forecast for Myanmar’s political and economic future remains bleak. Abma, the NLD and most governments in the West have condemned the coming elections as little more than an attempt by the junta to legitimise its authoritarian rule. Its new constitution automatically sets aside 25 per cent of lawmakers’ seats for the military. Although the NLD has yet to decide whether to contest the polls, Nyo Ohn Myint, an exiled NLD spokesman, says it is very unlikely the party will participate. Poverty is also growing. The junta’s continued financial mismanagement means most Myanmese are no better off than they were 20 years ago, earning less than US$1 a day. It may be too early to predict whether the monks will initiate a new uprising before the polls. Yet a warning by monk U Gambira before he was arrested and sentenced to 63 years in jail for his role in the protests two years ago suggests it is only a matter of time before Myanmar’s monks stand up to the regime again, and with it face more bloodshed. “We adhere to non-violence, but our spine is made of steel,” he said. “There is no turning back. It matters little if my life or the lives of colleagues should be sacrificed on this journey. Others will fill our sandals and more will join and follow.”

Your pet might be leaving more than just hairs ............................................................... The New York Times

Cute, but you really don’t know what it might be carrying …

For decades, the drug-resistant bug MRSA was almost exclusively a concern of humans, usually in hospitals. But in recent years, the germ has become a growing problem for veterinarians, with an increasing number of infections turning up in birds, cats, dogs, horses, pigs, rabbits and rodents. And that, infectious-disease experts say, is becoming a hazard to humans who own or spend time with these animals. “What’s happened, for the first time that we’ve noticed, is that you’re getting flip back and forth,” said Dr Scott Shaw, head of the infection control committee at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University. It is unknown how often pets play a role in human infections by methicillinresistant Staphylococcus aureus and vice versa; physicians and veterinarians do not routinely trace such infections to their source. When such scientific sleuthing is conducted, however – usually in the case of multiple or recurring infections – the results suggest a strong link. Last year, for example, an elephant calf and 20 of its caretakers at the San Diego

Zoo contracted MRSA skin infections. An investigation by the zoo and state health officials determined that the calf, which was eventually put down, had probably been infected by a keeper who unknowingly carried the bacteria. Still, experts are not recommending routine testing of pets and their humans. Instead, they call for the same kinds of precautions that apply to other pathogens, especially frequent washing of hands before and after playing with a pet. The first cases of MRSA in pets, about five years ago, appeared to be in therapy dogs and other animals exposed to patients or health care workers. Those animals are still thought to be at greatest risk, but the pattern might be changing. In a study this summer in The American Journal of Infection Control, Dr Elizabeth Scott and colleagues at the Centre for Hygiene and Health in Home and Community at Simmons College in Boston swabbed household surfaces at 35 randomly selected addresses to see what germs they would find. They found MRSA in nearly half of the homes they sampled. When they tried to figure out what might make it more likely to have the bacteria at home, they ruled out many

supposed risk factors, including working out at a gym, having children who attended day care, having a recent infection or recent antibiotic use, and even working in a health care facility. The one variable that overwhelmingly predicted the presence of the germ was the presence of a cat. Cat owners were eight times more likely than others to have MRSA at home. “There are a number of papers coming out now showing that pets pick up MRSA from us,” Scott said, “and that they shed it back into the environment again”. Scott’s next study will screen patients scheduled for elective surgeries. When she finds MRSA, she will also test their pets. “This is a burgeoning epidemic,” said Dr Richard Oehler, an infectious disease specialist at the University of South Florida college of medicine in Tampa, who reviewed case reports of MRSA jumping between people and animals. Oehler’s paper appeared in July in The Lancet. For protection, Oehler recommends hand washing or using hand gels before and after playing with a pet, not letting a pet lick people around the face, and not washing pet food or water bowls in the same sink that food is prepared in.

People should also wear gloves when attending to pets that have open wounds, he said, and should keep any of their own broken skin bandaged. And Oehler advised owners to be more attentive to their pets’ health in general. “In many of these cases, there was a lack of awareness that the animal was ill,” he said. “If a pet has a wound, they need that evaluated.” Scott Weese, a microbiologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, estimated that relatively few animals were infected but agreed that attentiveness was in order. “In the grand scheme of things with MRSA, pets are a pretty minor thing,” he said. “But when you consider how many MRSA infections are occurring in North America at the moment, if they’re a minor component of a major disease, that’s still something we need to be aware of.” And pets may pose a particular hazard because their relationships with people can be very close. “If you think about the individuals with whom you have the closest contact in terms of duration, intensity, intimacy, in most people, it’s going to be the spouse, then small children, then pets,” Weese said. “For some people, pets are No 1 on the list.”

… and there are some very nasty bugs out there. Photos: AFP, Dustin Shum