The Monks of Myanmar

The Monks of Myanmar. We have watched it build over the past month: barefoot monks in maroon and saffron-colored robes with shaven heads, begging bowls turned upside down in protest, marching through the streets of Yangon, in Myanmar (formerly Burma.) They have walked in peace, chanting…bearing witness to their cause of democracy and free speech in a country living under extreme repression and economic hardship.
At times, these monks used bullhorns to exhort onlookers to join them. Hundreds of thousands of civilians did join these protest marches against the military junta that has ruled the country since 1988. Today, a foreign diplomat said, “It was ‘an amazing scene’ as a column of about 8,000 to 10,000 people flooded past his embassy following a group of about 800 monks.”
Now the inevitable has happened – the junta called a curfew and forbade gatherings of more than five people at a time. The monks and protestors defied the restrictions, the military cracked down. It is a familiar scene: troops in riot gear out in full force, tear gas, shootings, beatings, reported deaths, trucks carrying off monks and protestors to prison. Government soldiers have even surrounded the monasteries, preventing thousands of monks from marching.
Earlier uprisings in 1988 were brutally crushed by the mighty hand of the military junta, killing an estimated 3,000 people. For the past nineteen years, the citizens of Myanmar have been intimidated, arrested, tortured, and killed in an effort to quash all political opposition. The Myanmar pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, has been under house arrest for twelve of the last eighteen years. The Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu have repeatedly spoken out against the junta and in support of their fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
It is the ultimate test of personal conviction: The unarmed versus the armed. The weak outnumbered by the strong. The peaceful being beaten and gunned down by those who make war. And still they march, these monks of Myanmar in their maroon and saffron-colored robes, ready to lay down their lives for Peace.
The whole world is watching. The United Nations is meeting today. China is very concerned that the disruptions will reflect badly on its 2008 Olympic plans, since it has close ties to and heavy investment in Myanmar. China needs that country’s raw materials, especially timber, minerals and natural gas. China, perhaps remembering the world outrage against its own crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, is reluctant to defend the junta publicly. And the Chinese diplomatic envoy is reported to have said that Beijing wanted Myanmar to move toward “a democracy process that is appropriate for the country.” Interesting how Peace – and democracy -- can become economically expedient.
The Myanmar military call themselves The State Peace and Development council. The word “Peace” can be equally adopted by tyrants as well as civil rights protestors. But we know what the face of the “real thing” looks like: barefoot monks in maroon and saffron-colored robes with shaven heads, begging bowls turned upside down in protest, marching through the streets, ready to lay down their lives for Peace.
Makes one wonder yet again: What would I be willing to do for freedom of speech, for democracy, for the right to march, for Peace…if it came to a showdown? I’m not at all sure I would have the monks’ courage. But I keep trying to build it – by three Acts of Peace a day. Maybe just by doing what I can, rather than what I can’t, I walk in tandem with those monks and protestors. And maybe the habit of Peace will take root in me, so that someday I won’t know any other way to react to violence…except peacefully.
Peace never comes easily. In Myanmar, in Iraq, in the Sudan, anywhere. But we can all try -- one step at a time -- to walk side by side in support of the monks in their maroon and saffron-colored robes...wherever we are. And send them our Acts of Peace every day.

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