Burma's Agony

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Then the violence began, with at least two monks reported killed. As an eyewitness at Rangoon's best-known landmark, the golden Shwedagon Pagoda, tells it, the authorities had locked the famous monument's gates to prevent the monks from gathering. Security forces guarded the entrances. A little after noon, hundreds of monks, students and other Rangoon residents approached the police, sat on the road and began to pray. The troops responded quickly, pulling monks from the crowd and striking both clerics and ordinary citizens with canes. Several smoke bombs exploded, and the riot police charged. Some protestors fought back with sticks and rocks. A car was set alight — by the soldiers, claim the demonstrators — and then the air filled with the unmistakable crack of live ammunition. Soldiers were shooting volleys of bullets into the air. "They are not Buddhists," cried Thurein, a 24-year-old student, clutching half a brick and fleeing from the smoke. "They are not humans. Tell the world. We were praying peacefully and they beat us. They beat the monks, even the old ones." An elderly monk stood with him, bleeding from a baton gash on his shaven head.

The protesters regrouped, though, and surged forward again. Minutes later, a tear-gas canister arced through the air toward the pagoda's eastern entrance. The monks retreated, many still armed with clubs of scavenged wood, one brandishing a riot shield he had snatched from the police. Suddenly, there was an enormous explosion: a clap of thunder. The demonstrators applauded this sign of cosmic solidarity. One monk raised his hands to the heavens, shouting "The rain is coming! The soldiers will be struck by lightning!" Nearby, a woman responded, "Lightning is not enough. They deserve more." A cheer went up with each subsequent clap of thunder.

Eventually, the battle stopped. The clerics gathered at a nearby monastery to march downtown. But first came a chilling display of the people's anger — and the monks' moral influence. A man on a motorcycle rode up. Most motorcycles have been banned for years because, the story goes, the paranoid generals feared being shot by an assassin riding one of them. Those few people who can tool around on motorcycles are therefore assumed to be government spies. The mob pounced on the man, pulling him off his bike and raising their wooden sticks. "Beat him," they cried. "Kill him." Quickly, the monks intervened and hustled the man to the safety of a monastery. The crowd was forced to take out their ire on the motorbike, smashing it to bits with clubs and rocks. "If the monks had not saved him," said a Burmese cameraman filming the scene, "he would be dead for sure." In 1988, some lynchings of government agents were stopped by monks and students; far more were not.

Despite the clash at Shwedagon, the monks continued on, their fervor broadcast over loudspeakers: "Let us overthrow the government." By early afternoon, the demonstrators had marched the two miles to the Sule Pagoda, another holy site. Again, the path to the pagoda itself was blocked by hundreds of security forces, many with bayonets fixed. The protestors sat and prayed in front of them. More soldiers armed with rifles arrived, though, and most of the crowd stood up and walked away. Twenty minutes later, the troops opened fire — a 10-second burst above the heads of those marchers who had dared to stay. People fled, but not for long. Another column of ralliers, at least a mile long, wound through the streets to join them. But as dusk approached, the crowds dispersed again. Shops in the Sule area had been shuttered all afternoon. In a city where the streets are vibrant and bustling until late, most residents had taken refuge at home. No one wanted to be out after dark.