HONG KONG — Buddhist monks, the most pacific of dedicated religious people, marched through the streets of Myanmar's main cities Yangon and Mandalay last week in protest against years of hardship, gross mismanagement and corruption inflicted on their long-suffering people.
Ordinary people joined in, holding hands to form a protective cordon around the monks saying their prayers. The few hundreds swelled to thousands and then to an estimated 100,000.
The demonstrators were a silent reproach not just to the secretive generals who have repressed the country for so long, but also to their main paymasters, the secretive rulers in Beijing. India's proud boast to be the biggest democracy in the world is also being tested by its support for the military regime.