Inside Myanmar: an overview of a troubled land

Teresa Malcolm, NCR special sections editor, visited Thailand in January, where she interviewed a Canadian-born Catholic missioner for a firsthand account of life inside Myanmar, a place hard for foreign journalists to access since a government crackdown on Buddhist monk-led demonstrations last fall. Malcolm, who previously lived in Thailand as a Peace Corps volunteer, reports on the missioner's observations and describes his work in Bangkok.

Where thousands of Buddhist monks and nuns walked the streets for alms, now a visitor to Yangon, Myanmar, saw not 50 altogether, and barbed wire surrounded the great Shwedagon Pagoda. Monks who once extended friendly invitations to their temple now shied away from a foreigner on the street, making no eye contact. And a shocked people were struggling to survive, drawing on a deep reservoir of faith that has sustained them for more than 45 years under a brutal military dictatorship.

Such were the impressions of Br. Matthew Peters, a Catholic missioner who has traveled to Myanmar formerly Burma -and worked with refugees in Thailand for more than 15 years. He spoke with NCR in late January, just days after he had returned to his home base in Bangkok from a two-week visit around Myanmar, his second since the country's military regime brutally crushed demonstrations led by Buddhist monks in September.

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"Matthew Peters" is a pseudonym that the Canadian-born Catholic brother requested because he fears that if he were identified publicly criticizing the military junta, he would not be able to continue his longtime ministry in the country. Lately, visas are even more difficult to come by, and Peters had not been able to enter the country as a missionary on his recent visits. Instead, he entered on a business visa, granted thanks to a letter of invitation from a Korean plywood company.

In November Peters distributed relief goods to Buddhist temples in Yangon and Mandalay, relying on the assistance of a United Nations official, rather than his usual contacts with Buddhist monks. "It was just too dangerous," Peters said. "That monk, for contacting a foreigner, he would be in prison that night." (Peters still drew some attention from the authorities in the far northern town of Myitkyina, which has a sizeable Christian population. Military intelligence officers questioned the rector of the Catholic seminary there for more than two hours while Peters stayed upstairs.)

The aid--food, clothing and blankets--was given to Buddhist monasteries that care for small children, as well as Muslim schools and old folks homes, and Hindu and Catholic groups in Myitkyina.

"What's startling, if you go to Yangon, I've never been to a place that's greener or more peaceful," Peters said. "Everybody seems quite cheerful and happy. Unless you know someone very well, they won't talk to you. If they do know you well, they'll say how shocked they are about what happened to the monks. And about the despair--when will there ever be any change?"

Declining economic conditions sparked a series of demonstrations and arrests earlier in 2007, culminating in August with the military junta's decision to remove subsidies on fuel prices, causing an overnight increase of 500 percent. Even though demonstrations in Yangon were broken up by police and more than 150 political dissidents arrested, protests spread to other towns. Following the beating of monks holding signs denouncing price hikes in Pakkoku Sept. 5, monks took to the streets by the thousands, marching with overturned bowls to indicate they would accept no alms from the military officials and their families, which in this society meant their excommunication. By Sept. 24, an estimated 150,000 people, including 30,000 to 50,000 monks, marched in Yangon.

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For the sake of the poor

Speaking to NCR, Peters emphasized that the heart of the monks' protest was not political, saying that a monk who escaped told him, "We did not ask the government to resign. We asked that the fuel increase be rescinded because it was breaking the backs of the poor who are already hungry and who are no longer going to be able to feed themselves. It [the protest] was done out of compassion for the poor."

Later, it became political as laypeople joined and "people again saw their hopes for the possibility of democracy raised," he said. After nearly two weeks of demonstrations, the military junta began a violent crackdown Sept. 26. Human Rights Watch documented security forces' brutal raids on monasteries following the protests. On Jan. 25, Amnesty International said that 700 people arrested during and since the protests are still behind bars.

None of the monks Peters knew in Yangon remained in the city. He learned that they were alive, but had been forced from their temples, derobed, given lay clothes and sent back to their villages. But stories reached Peters of monks who had been rounded up at night and taken to the countryside, where protest leaders were shot and burned, some while still alive. One abbot told Peters that some of the monks who were forcibly returned to their villages never arrived--their whereabouts unknown.