[Buddha-l] Myanmar Monks and hostages

[Dan Lusthaus]

>From today's NYTimes


http://tinyurl.com/39tnzs

Myanmar Monks Said to Free Hostages

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:16 a.m. ET

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- Militant Buddhist monks in northern Myanmar who had
taken about 20 officials hostage in a monastery Thursday freed them after
intervention by a senior abbot, ending a tense standoff, said a senior monk.

[...]

''Local authorities and senior Buddhist monks today visited monasteries to
make pleas to the monks not to stage protests and to apologize for what
happened yesterday. Monks at the monastery held the authorities inside the
monastery and burned cars belonging to them,'' a town resident told The
Associated Press.

[...] The government has detained scores of activists and used gangs of
hired thugs to suppress a recent rare wave of protests, triggered by fuel
price increases last month of as much as 500 percent.

Monks have been at the forefront of past protests of British colonialism and
military dictatorship, but have been kept on a tight leash by the current
junta, which took power after violently quashing mass pro-democracy
demonstrations in 1988.


Dan L