Anatomy Of a Failed Revolution

By Andrew Marshall / Rangoon

You should get closer," says the young woman in the crowd behind me. "If foreigners are here, they won't shoot." It's about 1 p.m. on Sept. 27, and I am wedged among thousands of pro-democracy protesters near the gold-domed Sule Pagoda in downtown Rangoon. Facing us are hundreds of soldiers and riot police, who look on edge as they finger their assault rifles. The woman behind me is hoping that they won't want to create an international incident by firing on a scruffy-looking Brit, and that my presence will protect the protesters. She will soon be proved terribly wrong. But for the moment, the protesters appear undaunted, even jubilant. They are chanting a Buddhist mantra whose melody will haunt me for days to come:

Let everyone be free from harm.

Let everyone be free from anger.

Let everyone be free from hardship.

It was the Buddhist monks who first sang this mantra. For a week now, they have been marching through these streets, calling peacefully for change in a country that has been ruled for almost a half-century by a barbaric military junta. Burma's monkhood and military are roughly the same size--each has 300,000 to 400,000 men--but there the similarities end. With the monks preaching tolerance and peace and the military demanding obedience at gunpoint, these protests pit Burma's most beloved institution against its most reviled.

"Get closer," the young woman urges. The troops are a hundred yards away, and I think that's close enough. I'm mindful of reports that just last night the military raided more than a dozen monasteries, beating and arresting hundreds of monks. And I know that soldiers like these snuffed out Burma's last great pro-democracy uprising in 1988, killing and injuring thousands. I know they will not hesitate to shoot, whether or not there's a foreigner present. Sure enough, seconds later they open fire. From that moment on, the world's most unlikely uprising--with its vivid images of marching monks and exuberant students, of golden pagodas and rain-drenched streets--feels doomed.

I fell in love with this country a decade ago, bewitched by its rich culture, breathtaking landscapes and hospitable people. Despite their isolation and the ever present fear of arrest, I found the Burmese worldly and eager to talk, and I quickly formed lasting friendships. I returned perhaps a dozen times, witnessing changes that were usually for the worse. People grew poorer and were stalked by disease and malnutrition. Schools and hospitals crumbled from neglect. Insurgencies raged along the rugged borders. The only real constant has been the junta, which seized power in 1962 and has run a promising nation into the ground. But there have been some positive changes too. A 2004 internal purge dealt a blow to a once fearsome spy network. A year later, the regime moved to a remote new capital it called Naypyidaw, or "the Abode of Kings." Suddenly people in Rangoon seemed to talk a little more freely. Mobile phones and the Internet arrived and, despite being costly and state-controlled, were embraced by thousands. Student activists jailed after the 1988 protests were released and quietly began regrouping. Then, two months ago, members of this self-styled '88 Generation hit the streets to protest the government's fuel-price hikes.

Their protests were quickly snuffed out--or so the junta believed. Three weeks later, I arrived in Rangoon to witness what now seems like a dream: my first vision of the marching monks.

Sunday, Sept. 23

They pour out of the Shwedagon, an immense golden pagoda that is Burma's most revered Buddhist monument, two miles north of downtown Rangoon. The monks form an unbroken, mile-long column--barefoot, chanting their haunting mantras, clutching pictures of the Buddha, their robes drenched with the late-monsoon rains. They walk briskly, stopping briefly to pray when they reach Sule Pagoda. Then they're off again, coursing through the city streets in a solid stream of red and orange, like blood vessels giving life to an oxygen-starved body. Their effect on Rangoon's residents is electrifying. At first, only a few brave onlookers applaud. Others clasp their hands together in respectful prayer or quietly weep. Then, as people grow bolder, the monks are joined by tens of thousands of Burmese, some chanting their own mantra, in English: "Democracy! Democracy!"

I learn that just yesterday, a group of protesters walked past the crumbling lakeside home of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent 12 of the past 18 years under house arrest. Standing behind barricades manned by riot police, Suu Kyi prayed with the crowd for 15 minutes before tearfully urging them to march on.

Monday, Sept. 24

At a Pagoda in the Shwedagon's shadow, Aung Way, a poet and '88 stalwart jailed three times for his political views, presses into my hand a poem, which I shove into my pocket. Some of the monks chew betel nut, which makes their mouths froth alarmingly with bloodred saliva. The oldest monk, who is 49 and holds a Burmese translation of Francis Fukuyama's The Great Disruption, says the monks have three demands: "Release Aung San Suu Kyi and all other political prisoners; begin a process of national reconciliation; lower the prices of daily commodities."

The junta's response comes in the evening, when Brigadier General Thura Myint Maung, Minister of Religious Affairs, is quoted on state television as promising action against the monks. Within hours, trucks with loudspeakers are cruising Rangoon's dimly lit streets, announcing a curfew and threatening to arrest anyone who marches with the monks.

Tuesday, Sept. 25

The crackdown starts slowly. Several well-known democracy activists are arrested overnight. Aung Way goes into hiding. Guiltily, I retrieve his poem. "We want freedom," it reads. "We want friendship between our army and our people." The New Light of Myanmar, a junta newspaper, blames the violence on "hot-blooded monks" who "are jealous of national development and stability."

Still, the monks march. The demonstrations are so large that downtown Rangoon has a carnival atmosphere. Students have now joined the march, waving red flags bearing their emblem, the fighting peacock. At the rear of the column is a group of shaven-headed Buddhist nuns in their bubble-gum-pink robes.

Wednesday, Sept. 26

The Shwedagon's eastern gate is locked and guarded by soldiers and riot police, who are confronted by hundreds of angry monks and students. It is around noon, and the battle for the Shwedagon is about to begin. There are explosions--of smoke bombs, meant to shock and disorient--and the riot police charge, striking the protesters with canes. The monks and students fight back, and soon there is the unmistakable crackle of live ammunition; the soldiers are shooting above our heads. "They are not Buddhists," rages Thurein, 24, a student, who is clutching half a brick and running from the smoke. "They are not humans. Tell the world. We were praying peacefully, and they beat us."

The monks dress their wounds and begin their march downtown. They are pursued by trucks full of soldiers, who are jeered and pelted with rocks as they approach the Sule Pagoda. Again the soldiers fire over the protesters' heads. As dusk approaches, the crowds disperse. Nighttime Rangoon is usually a vibrant place, its sidewalks crowded with tea shops. Now nobody wants to be out after dark.

Thursday, Sept. 27

Overnight, troops surge into monasteries across the city, beating and arresting monks. At Ngwe Kyar Yan monastery, the floors are puddled with blood, the thin dormitory walls perforated with holes from rubber bullets. The raids enrage the people. The lives of Burmese Buddhists are intertwined with the lives of the monks. Monks preside over marriages, chant over the dead; they shelter orphans, care for HIV patients and help schoolchildren cram for their exams. A devout Buddhist will not even step on the shadow of a monk. With soldiers and police still inside Ngwe Kyar Yan, hundreds of local people surround it. "We had no weapons," a neighbor tells me. "Everyone just wanted to protect the monks." Eventually, with night approaching, the security forces fight their way out with live rounds, killing two people.

Only a handful of monks escape the junta's dragnet to join that day's demonstration near the Sule Pagoda. But there are thousands of protesters when I arrive. More military trucks pull up at the intersection, and the troops inside noisily cock their rifles. The crowd tenses as one. Seconds later, there are more smoke bombs, and we are running for our lives.

We run along the streets, keeping low, chased by the sound of gunfire. Not far from where I was standing lies the body of Japanese photographer Kenji Nagai, shot dead by a soldier at point-blank range.

Riot police are marching north up Sule Pagoda Road, banging truncheons against shields. Behind them is an even more menacing sight: hundreds of troops marching in formation. Between the two groups is a truck with loudspeakers that announce the street is to be cleared. Miraculously, despite the bloodshed, people are still protesting, still chanting their defiant mantra: Let everyone be free from harm ...

Friday, Sept. 28

The New Light of Myanmar gives its version of yesterday's events: "Groups of demonstrators mobbed security forces, throwing stones and sticks at them, using catapults and swords," it reads. "The security forces had to fire warning shots as the protesters turned a blind [eye] to their repeated requests." The official death toll is 10, but everyone thinks it is actually much higher. A United Nations official tells me 40 were killed and 3,000 arrested, including 1,000 monks. Another diplomat hazards "hundreds" of deaths.

The crackdown has worked. There are small, sporadic protests but no marches. The sacred rallying points, the Shwedagon and Sule pagodas, are locked and guarded. Everywhere there are troops arresting and beating people.

As I leave Rangoon for Bangkok, the 2007 democracy uprising feels over. Even the monsoon rains--such a feature of these once joyous protests, with the monks marching shin-deep through flooded streets--have petered out. The sun returns, and a cheerless rainbow arcs across the city. "Peace and stability restored, traveling and marketing back to normal in Yangon," trumpets The New Light of Myanmar.

But I have a sense that the junta's victory may yet prove Pyrrhic. The brutal crackdown has shattered the relationship between the generals and the monks. The regime spent years building new pagodas and donating alms to cultivate its image as protector of the faith. It can hardly claim that role now. The assault on a revered institution may yet cause divisions in the army's ranks. "Soldiers are humans," says a Burmese analyst with close ties to the military. "They have families. They have monks among their relatives." Already stories are being told of monks damning to hell the soldiers who beat them--and the soldiers breaking down in tears, believing they have been condemned.

The prospect of eternal damnation is not the army's only problem. It is crippled by low recruitment and high desertion rates. Money is scarce, even for the regime's enforcers. I saw many troops carrying only rusting rifles. The soldier who killed Nagai was wearing flip-flops.

The economic misery that sparked the protests remains. Burma has a grave and worsening humanitarian crisis. Half of Asia's malaria deaths occur here; a third of the children under 5 years old are malnourished; most of its people live on less than a dollar a day. "People have been successfully intimidated into keeping their heads down--maybe," says Shari Villarosa, charge d'affaires at the U.S. embassy in Rangoon. "But it's still a struggle for them to survive--to feed and educate their families, to get health care. So there could be another eruption."

If that happens, what can the world do? There is already unprecedented international pressure on Burma, although its impact on this isolated and xenophobic regime is questionable. While I was in Rangoon, U.N. Special Envoy Ibrahim Gambari met with both Suu Kyi (twice) and junta chief Than Shwe, but Gambari's efforts look unlikely to kick-start a dialogue between the two. Similarly, China's influence over Burma--and its willingness to use it--is probably exaggerated. Its U.N. Ambassador, Wang Guangya, has characterized Burma's troubles as "basically internal."

But the Burmese aren't giving up. Before leaving Rangoon, I met a former political prisoner who was delighted that so many young students had joined the protests. "Some were carrying fighting peacock flags, just like in '88," he said. "The message has clearly got through to the next generation." The '07 Generation--monks and laypeople alike--may yet rise again.