BUDDHIST monks in Burma staged a protest march yesterday, their first since soldiers crushed a pro-democracy uprising a month ago, as UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari prepared a return visit to the troubled country.
A Rangoon-based Asian diplomat said Mr Gambari, who first visited shortly after the army crackdown, would arrive on Saturday on a second mission to coax the generals into talks with the detained opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
The latest mar
ch by monks in the central town of Pakokku, 370 miles north-west of Rangoon, suggests the crackdown merely managed to stifle, not eradicate, widespread anger at 45 years of military rule and deepening poverty.
The town has been a flashpoint since soldiers fired over the heads of monks in early September, transforming small, localised protests against shock rises in fuel prices into the biggest anti-junta uprising in two decades.
A witness said about 200 monks chanted prayers as they walked three abreast through the centre of the town.
"We walked around the town and chanted ... We are continuing our protest from last month as we have not yet achieved any of the demands we asked for," one monk told the Democratic Voice of Burma, a dissident radio station based in Norway.
"Our demands are for lower commodity prices, national reconciliation and immediate release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all the political prisoners," he said.
"We are not afraid of getting arrested or tortured," another monk was quoted as saying.
He said they had little time to organise the march so it was small, but "there will be more organised and bigger protests soon." There were no reports of trouble.
Official media say ten people, including a Japanese video journalist, were killed when soldiers were sent in to clear the streets last month, although western governments said the real toll was likely to be far higher.
Mr Gambari has been on a six-country Asian diplomatic tour to press neighbours - especially India and China - to take a tougher line against the generals, one of the world's most isolated regimes.
"We think he is going to be busier during this visit than his previous one," the Asian diplomat said. After Mr Gambari's first trip, the junta appointed retired General Aung Kyi as a go-between for Ms Suu Kyi and the junta chief Than Shwe, who is widely known to loathe the 62-year-old Nobel laureate.
Gen Aung Kyi held a 75-minute meeting with Ms Suu Kyi last week, although it is not known what they discussed.
After talks with China in Beijing yesterday, Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, repeated his idea of offering incentives for the people of Burma if the government launches a political dialogue with Ms Suu Kyi and their talks make progress.
JUNTA 'SIGNS UP BOY SOLDIERS'
BURMA'S military junta is recruiting children as young as ten into its armed forces, a human rights group claimed yesterday.
Human Rights Watch, of New York, accused the junta of targeting children due to "continued army expansion, high desertion rates and a lack of willing volunteers". Its report said: "Military recruiters and civilian brokers receive cash payments and other incentives for each new recruit, even if the recruit clearly violates minimum age or health standards."
It cited the case of a boy who said he was forcibly recruited at 11, though he was only 4ft 3in tall and weighed less than 5st.
The full article contains 582 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
