Anxious Mo-Fo

From the BBC, Burma protesters defy crackdown:

Up to 10,000 Burmese Buddhist monks and civilians have defied police tear gas and live bullets on the ninth day of protests against the military rulers.

At least one monk was killed, hospital sources in the main city of Rangoon said. The government has confirmed one death, without giving details.

From The Economist, Myanmar: Monks and the Military:

DEMONSTRATIONS led by Buddhist monks in military-ruled Myanmar (formerly Burma) gathered force over the weekend and, on Monday September 24th, the biggest protest yet seen was staged in the main city, Yangon. Up to 100,000 people took part, among them perhaps 20,000 red- and orange-robed monks. The website of Irrawaddy, a newspaper run by Burmese exiles from Thailand, reported an equally huge monk-led protest on Monday in the western town of Sittwe.

At first, the monks limited themselves to chanting prayers and sermons, and urged the Burmese public not to join their marches. But over the weekend, a hitherto unknown group, the All Burma Monks’ Alliance, urged people to “struggle peacefully against the evil military dictatorship” until its downfall. Monday’s march was joined by some of the country’s best-known actors and musicians, as well as leaders of the opposition National League of Democracy (NLD) and crowds of ordinary Burmese. It has become the biggest challenge Myanmar’s brutal regime has faced since the uprising of 1988, which it crushed with extreme violence. The question is: how will it respond this time? Later on Monday, state-run media quoted the government as threatening the monks with unspecified action “according to the law” if their protests did not stop.

Additional coverage:

• The New York Times, Police Clash With Monks in Myanmar
• The New York Times, From Their Nation-Turned-Bunker, Burmese Generals Peer Out, and In
• This blog entry on Boing Boing
• Flicker user gmhembree’s photos, the link to which I stole from the aforementioned Boing Boing post. More photos can be found if you search for “burma monks” on Flickr.

Thumbnail of this image, posted on Flickr by the Flickr user gmhembree.