They beg for alms, for sustenance on the streets of Burma. But the monks are even hungrier for democracy. Ashin Ven Kovida tells Spiegel magazine how he and others had hoped the military regime would relent under pressure. Instead he is now at a safe house in Thailand. An unknown number of monks and other protestors are in jail or dead.
In a country where Buddhist monks draw nearly universal respect, an officer had to slap soldiers in the front row to attack the protesting monks. Still the protestors were no match for military hardware.
The BBC Burmese service and the Norwegian-based Democratic Voice of Burma were instrumental in spreading the news about the government's attacks on monks. After hearing about the news, Ashin Ven Kovida organized several demonstrations.
Organizing protests is hard in Burma (Myanmar) where censorship comes so naturally to the aging military regime. But according to a comment posted on DVB, there may be an open Wi-Fi hot spot near the U.S. Embassy in Rangoon (Yangon). Regardless of the Internet's accessibility, television footage and photos continue to reach the outside world.
DVB's photos show a dead monk, a Japanese journalist who was shot dead, and a dozen others who were injured. The death of Kenji Nagai, the journalist for APF News, was caught on camera:
As powerful as the monks' peaceful protests were, the marches and deaths would have meant very little had they not been printed. To that end, continued engagement, not an embargo, is necessary, argues Richard Bernstein in The New York Times.
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