김정일 정권과 함께 세계 최악의 독재정권이란 평을 받아온 미얀마(舊버마)에서 승려들이 주도한 거리 시위가 연일 계속되고 있다. 수도인 양곤에선 1만 명이나 되는 승려 시위대가 가두 행진을 하고 시민들이 박수를 보내고 있다. 시위는 지방으로 확산되고 있다. 이 시위는 기름값 인상에 대한 반대로 시작되었으나 군사정권 타도로 방향을 선회하고 있다. 민주투사이자 노벨 평화상 수상자인 아웅산 수키 여사가 4년만에 처음으로 연금중인 자택에서 바깥으로 손을 흔들었다고 한다. 온건한 승려들은 점차 군사정권을 公敵으로 규정하면서 국민들의 총궐기를 호소하고 있다.

1988년 미얀마의 학생들이 주도한 反정부 시위를 군사정권은 流血진압했다. 3000명이 피살되었다고 한다. 1990년 군사정권은 국회의원 선거를 허용했는데 이 선거에서 아웅산 여사가 지도한 민주국민연합이 압승했다. 군사정권은 이 선거결과를 무시하고 계속 집권하면서 아웅산 여사를 가택 연금시켰다.

1960년부터 집권하고 있는 버마의 군사정권은 산업화를 성공시킨 박정희의 개방적 근대화 노선과는 반대로 폐쇄적 경제정책을 썼다. 버마는 쌀, 목재, 기름이 많이 난다. 동남아시아에서 가장 자원이 많은 나라이다. 영국의 식민지였기 때문에 관료제도 등 사회적 기반도 좋았다. 네윈을 비롯한 군사독재자들의 폐쇄정책은 이런 好조건의 버마를 망쳤다. 세계에서 가장 부패하고 가장 가난한 나라가 되어버렸다.

미얀마에서는 승려가 가장 존경 받는다. 이 나라는 군대, 학생, 승려가 3대 조직이다. 이번 승려들의 시위는 승려와 학생들이 손을 잡고 군대에 대항하는 형식으로 진행되고 있다. 1988년과 다른 점은 인터넷, 비디오를 통해서 시위장면이 국내와 세계로 퍼져가고 있다는 점이다. 언론통제가 잘 먹히지 않고 있다.

미얀마의 시위는 김정일 정권에 대해서도 미묘한 영향을 주게 될 것이다. 1995년 이후 黨의 배급능력이 마비되자 북한사람들은 배급이 아닌 시장에 의존하여 생존하고 있다. 시장의 물가가 폭등하면 民心 불안으로 연결된다. 미얀마의 이번 시위도 기름값을 500% 올린 정부의 조치에서 시작되었다. 경제불안과 정치불만이 결합하면 혁명으로 이어질 수 있다.

북한에서도 그런 잠재적 불안요인이 조성되고 있다. 세상에서 변하지 않는 것은 아무것도 없다.

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Protests Grow in Myanmar Against Junta


Published: September 23, 2007
(Page 2 of 2)
BANGKOK, Monday, Sept. 24 — The largest street protests in two decades against Myanmar’s military rulers gained momentum on Sunday as thousands of onlookers cheered huge columns of barefoot Buddhist monks and shouted support for the detained pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

The New York Times
Winding for a sixth day through rainy streets, the protest swelled to 10,000 monks in the main city of Yangon, according to witnesses and other accounts relayed out of the closed country, including some clandestinely shot videos.

It came one day after a group of several hundred monks paid respects to Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi at the gate of her home, the first time she has been seen in public in more than four years.

The link between the clergy and the leader of the country’s pro-democracy movement, the beginnings of large-scale public participation in the marches and a call by some monks for a wider protest raised the stakes for the government. So far, it has mostly allowed the monks free reign in the streets, apparently fearing a public backlash if they crack down on them in the devout Buddhist nation.

Monks were reported to be parading through a number of cities on Sunday, notably the country’s second largest city, Mandalay, where an estimated 10,000 people, including 4,000 monks, had marched on Saturday.

Myanmar’s military government has sealed off the country to foreign journalists but information about the protests has been increasingly flowing out through news reports, exile groups in Thailand with contacts inside Myanmar, and through the photographs, videos and audio files, carried rapidly by technologies, including the Internet, that the government has failed to squelch.

The state-controlled press has carried no reports about the monks’ demonstrations.

Since the military crushed a peaceful nationwide uprising in 1988, killing an estimated 3,000 civilians, the country, formerly known as Burma, has sunk further into poverty and repression and become a symbol for the outside world of the harsh military subjugation of a people.

Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, has been locked inside her home for 12 of the last 18 years and the government has arrested thousands of political prisoners.

The United States and Europe have led a tightening economic boycott that has been undermined by trade and assistance from Myanmar’s neighbors, mainly China but also India and some Southeast Asian nations. President Bush, his wife Laura and a roster of Hollywood celebrities have spoken out recently about Myanmar, and the abuses of human and political rights by the military junta are expected to take a high profile at the United Nations session starting this week.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, asked about Myanmar as she arrived at the United Nations on Sunday, told reporters that the Bush administration was closely monitoring how the government deals with the protests.

“The Burmese people deserve better. They deserve a life to be able to live in freedom, just as everyone does,” she said. “And the brutality of this regime is well known, and so we will be speaking about that and I think the president will be speaking about it with many of his colleagues.”

The public display of discontent in Myanmar mirrors that of the previous uprising — anger over a brutal and incompetent military government that has turned one of Southeast Asia’s best endowed and most sophisticated nations into one of its most repressed and destitute.

Surreptitiously shot photographs and videos recorded on Sunday showed thousands of civilians marching quickly through the streets side by side with the monks, emboldened by the continuing demonstrations into a rare show of defiance.

Some pictures showed people joining hands in a protective cordon as they walked beside the monks in their dark red robes. Others showed Buddhist nuns with shaved heads marching through the streets as onlookers applauded.

In audio recordings people shouted “Do-aye” — “It is our task” — a slogan of determination that was also heard on the streets in 1988.

The photographs and videos themselves represented acts of courage in a closed and repressive country that has tried to quash the spread of information.

But modern communications technology has brought the protests into the world’s eye in a way that was not possible in 1988.

Both the government and protesters have so far sought to avoid the kind of confrontation that led to widespread bloodshed in the 1988 uprising, which was led mostly by students.

“The monks are the highest moral authority in the Burmese culture,” said Soe Aung, a spokesman for a coalition of exile groups based in Thailand. “If something happens to the monks, the situation will spread much faster than what happened to the students in 1988.”

The cautious approach by authorities — and the challenges it poses — were demonstrated on Saturday when guards removed barriers to allow about 500 monks to walk down the tree shaded street where Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi lives.
She met them at the iron gate outside her home, and witnesses told news agencies that Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi was in tears as she greeted the monks, who chanted prayers as they faced the security officers with riot shields who sealed off her home.

On Sunday, witness accounts relayed by exile groups reported that members of the public shouted their support for Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi and that some of the protesting monks also shouted, “Release Suu Kyi!”

Uniformed police officers and soldiers have stayed in the background throughout a month of building protests. But witnesses said Sunday that plainclothes police officers trailed the marchers and some, armed with shotguns, were posted along the route.

The Associated Press reported that police officers turned back a small group of monks who tried to march for a second day to the home of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi.

Although she has been sealed off from the public and has been allowed almost no visitors, Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, 62, remains a martyr and rallying symbol for the population.

“She has been out of contact with virtually everyone, but her symbolic importance cannot be underestimated,” said Basil Fernando, director of the Asian Human Rights Commission. “Symbolically, her reintroduction into the political life of the country at such a dire moment is of enormous importance.”

Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of an assassinated independence hero, Aung San, came to prominence when she became a leader in the pro-democracy demonstrations of 1988.

Her political party, the National League for Democracy, won a landslide victory in Parliamentary elections in 1990, although the junta, fearing her charismatic appeal, had already placed her under house arrest.

The military government annulled the result of the 1990 elections and held on to power. But it miscalculated the public mood again in 2002 when it released her from house arrest and allowed her to tour the country, visiting party offices.

She drew increasingly large and enthusiastic crowds until a band of government-backed thugs attacked a convoy in which she was traveling, killing several people. The government seized her again and placed under even stricter house arrest, cutting off her telephone and deepening her isolation.

The latest protests began Aug. 19 in response to sharp, unannounced fuel price increases of up to 500 percent, immediately raising the prices of goods and transportation.

They were led at first by former student protesters and other activists, but most of these leaders had been arrested or were in hiding when the monks began their protests last Tuesday.

The monks were apparently motivated at first by an attack on a small demonstration at which security officers fired shots into the air and beat a number of monks.

Since then, the monks’ protests have spread from city to city and have become more overtly political.

On Saturday, an organization of clergy called the All Burma Monks Alliance, called for a widening of the protests. “In order to banish the common enemy evil regime from Burmese soil forever, united masses of people need to join hands with the united clergy forces,” the group said in a statement.

It went on: “We pronounce the evil military despotism, which is impoverishing and pauperizing our people of all walks, including the clergy, as the common enemy of all our citizens.”