"A priceless political gift in September"

Today's Washington Post covered the perspectives of opposition leaders in the border town of Mae Sot in Thailand. "The leaders here say they believe that the generals who run Burma gave them a priceless political gift in September by ordering soldiers to attack Buddhist monks. "We have to thank them for their stupidity," said Maung Maung, secretary general of the National Council of the Union of Burma, which is based in this hill town along the Thailand-Burma border and is the main umbrella group for exiled politicians and ethnic leaders."

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Capitalizing on Burma's Autumn of Dissent
Opposition in Exile Urging More Protests, Even Armed Conflict

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 4, 2007

MAE SOT, Thailand -- Desperate to maintain the momentum of their challenge to military rule in Burma, opposition leaders in this border town are working with networks of supporters to get monks to return to the streets in protest, to push foreign governments to impose tougher sanctions and to persuade ethnic militias to resume guerrilla attacks.

The leaders here say they believe that the generals who run Burma gave them a priceless political gift in September by ordering soldiers to attack Buddhist monks. "We have to thank them for their stupidity," said Maung Maung, secretary general of the National Council of the Union of Burma, which is based in this hill town along the Thailand - Burma border and is the main umbrella group for exiled politicians and ethnic leaders.

Images of soldiers clubbing barefoot monks in saffron robes focused world attention on Burma's often-ignored military dictatorship and prodded the generals to begin talking to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace laureate and opposition leader whose party trounced them in a 1990 election and who is under house arrest in Rangoon. It also energized a nationwide cadre of angry monks, potent agents of grass-roots change in a Buddhist nation where the number of monks (about 400,000) rivals the number of soldiers.

Still, the generals' public relations gift loses value with each passing day, Burmese opposition figures say.

Without more "bone-breaking" pressure on the generals, talks with Suu Kyi will devolve into an empty delaying game, Maung Maung said. More than a dozen senior leaders of the opposition who were interviewed here, including longtime members of Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, echoed his comments.

To ratchet up pressure, opposition leaders said they are urging monks inside Burma to regroup and join in more mass protests with students and workers. They are pleading with Western countries to stiffen economic sanctions and to donate cash to support political activity inside Burma, which the generals call Myanmar.

Opposition leaders including several recently exiled supporters of Suu Kyi, a proponent of nonviolence, are also urging Burma's armed ethnic minorities to prepare for a unified guerrilla conflict against the government.

"Armed struggle has to be part of the pressure," said Khun Myint Tun, a longtime supporter of Suu Kyi and member of the Pao ethnic group. "Something needs to happen soon to take advantage of the September momentum."

Some of that momentum does seem to be slipping away.

The military continued last week to raid monasteries and arrest civilians, as it has since the late September crackdown on protesters. Suu Kyi remains under house arrest and is cut off from her supporters.China, Thailand and India have not substantially changed their economic dealings with the Burmese military, buying electricity, natural gas, oil and timber worth an estimated $2 billion a year.

Rangoon is said to be quiet and tense. Since the crackdown, sandbag bunkers have been built on many of its streets. Soldiers often stand around the bunkers, but it is now uncommon to see monks in the country's largest city, according to Shari Villarosa, charge d'affaires for the U.S. Embassy in Burma. "You can't overestimate the power of fear to keep things from happening," Villarosa said.

Here in Mae Sot, newly exiled monks, baby-faced army deserters and ethnic minorities rub shoulders with aging politicians who have been waiting for decades for something -- anything -- that would send the Burmese generals packing.

The September marches obviously fell short of that goal. But veterans of the opposition movement agree that the monks' protests revealed significant weaknesses in the intelligence arm of the military junta.

After the demonstrations, the military detained more than 3,000 people, holding many in makeshift detention centers. Individuals released from detention in recent weeks have described their interrogators as confused, inept and sometimes willing to accept bribes to release detainees. They often argued among themselves in front of detainees.

Diplomats and analysts have traced the breakdown of military intelligence to the abrupt dismissal in 2004 of Gen. Khin Nyunt, then prime minister and the longtime head of intelligence. His firing and arrest, on order of Senior Gen. Than Shwe, the head of state, coincided with the firing of thousands of intelligence officers. "The intelligence operation used to be very professional, all the way down to the lower ranks," said David Tharckabaw, a leader of the Karen National Union, which represents the Karen ethnic minority. "Now it has become amateurish."

The crackdown in September differed from previous episodes of military brutality inside Burma in that it was captured in photographs and on videos that were splashed around the world within hours.

This was no accident, according to opposition leaders here in Mae Sot. "We had about 200 people inside the country trained to take pictures with digital and video cameras," said Maung Maung, of the National Council. "We also trained them to transmit using satellite phones and Internet cafes. They were on the front lines when the demonstration started."

He said the opposition had learned a lesson in 1988, when the military killed hundreds of people in Rangoon in an attack on student demonstrators. Then, few images of the attacks reached the outside world. "We were not taking any chances this time," Maung Maung said.

Since the crackdown, though, many of the individuals who captured and transmitted images have been detained, gone into hiding or fled the country. An acute need has arisen for money to replenish the larder -- with trained people and equipment, Maung Maung said.

For years, the U.S. government has taken the lead among foreign governments in providing funding for this kind of training and equipment. Those funds are likely to increase substantially in the coming year, if pending legislation moves through Congress.

"We are not talking about guns," said Maung Maung. "We want money for sat phones, for digital cameras, for typewriters for the monks, for bicycles. We need it now." But there is plenty of talk here about guns. It is focused on 17 ethnic groups that since the 1990s have suspended armed conflict with the military.

The leaders of ethnic groups such as the Shan and the Wa have been allowed to trade timber, opium and other commodities. They keep their guns but do not fight. Thanks to these cease-fire deals, the generals have enjoyed a break from costly and unwinnable guerrilla wars in the mountains along the Burma - Thailand border. But deals with the generals have brought little economic or social benefit to the ethnic minorities, according to diplomats.

Now, leaders of several of the ethnic groups are talking with the leaders of Suu Kyi's exiled political party and other opposition leaders about resuming their conflicts -- as a way of pressuring the military to negotiate seriously with Suu Kyi. "Without this kind of pressure, the military regime does not move, and that is for sure," said Mahn Sha, secretary general of the Karen National Union. The Karen have refused to sign a cease-fire with the military.

In Burma, where about 90 percent of the population is Buddhist, monks have periodically played major political roles.

In the 1930s, they took part in protests against British colonial rule. They joined students in 1988 street demonstrations. But this September, according to opposition leaders here in Mae Sot, monks moved to center stage in determining Burma's future. They were attacked by the military in public and on camera, and those images have been widely disseminated inside Burma, on CDs and DVDs, according to Maung Maung. In the weeks since their marches were broken up and they were dispersed from monasteries, many of Burma's monks have refused to accept alms from members of the military or their families, according to opposition leaders, diplomats and two monks who recently fled the country.

In Burmese culture, giving food and gifts to monks is a primary way of accumulating merit for the next life.

Annoyed by the monks' refusal to accept their offerings, some military officers and their wives have threatened the monks and forced them to take food and other gifts, said Kowvida, 26, a monk who said he took part in the September marches and fled Rangoon in late October.

"In these cases, we accept unwillingly and then throw it away," Kowvida said. Asked if he believes more street protests by the monks are likely, Kowvida said he honestly does not know. But he said that with the passage of time anger is building, not ebbing.

"There is a fire of dissatisfaction," he said, "and I think it will explode sometime."