Solidarity rally for Burma protest draws secular and religious people
Colombo (AsiaNews) – A demonstration organised by the ‘Human Rights in Conflict program’ of the Law and Society Trust (LST) and the Friends of the Third World (FTW) was held yesterday in front of the Myanmar Embassy in Colombo in support of Buddhist monks and their struggle against their country’s military dictatorship. For more than hour over 200 people, including Catholic priests and nuns, members of leftwing political parties, human rights activists and about 40 Burmese Buddhist monks stood in silence across from the embassy holding signs and banners saying among other things: “Free Political Prisoners,” “Listen to the People,” “Stop Killing – Freedom to report,” “Release Aung San Suu Kyi.”
Speaking to AsiaNews Ruki Fernando, co-ordinator of the LST’s Human Rights in Conflict program, expressed his group’s “total condemnation of this brutal repression” and its “full support for the Burmese people.”
He said he was shocked by the news that pro-democracy leader and Noble Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 15 years, was sent to high-security Insein Prison in total disregard of calls for her immediate release.
“We can not go to Myanmar to protest. Therefore we need to unite with Burmese monks and people here in Sri Lanka. That's why I am here now. . . . We all need to support this struggle. We should feel that their struggle is ours,” said former lawmaker Baddegama Samith Thero.
The Venerable Madampagama Assaji Thero, secretary of the Dharma Sahkthi Foundation, told AsiaNews that his group too expressed its “full solidarity and support for the monks and people of Myanmar.” However, only a handful of Sri Lankan Buddhist monks took part in the event.
The protesters’ open letter calling for “an end to repression of peaceful dissent in Myanmar” could not be delivered to the Myanmar diplomatic mission because the embassy “refused to take it.”
“The ambassador did not want to act as a channel of communication between the people of Sri Lanka and the government of Myanmar. It is not enough for him to maintain contacts between the governments of the two countries,” said Ruki Fernando. “We did send the open letter to the embassy via e-mail and fax,” he added. “Let us hope they’ll take it into consideration. We also sent it to the media.”
Burmese Buddhist monk Ukkmsa, who is in Sri Lanka to study at the Sri Praggananda Pirivena in Maharagama, expressed his “gratitude for the groups and individuals who organised this peaceful protest,” but also “sadness and anger” that the embassy would refuse to take the letter.
Another protest march took place on September 27. Monks from Burma, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh walked from the Tilakarathnarama Temple in Borella, not far from Colombo, to Rosemead Square, where the Myanmar Embassy is located, to hand over a petition against the junta’s violence.
Last Monday a group of Buddhist monks presented another petition against the junta’s repression to the local United Nations office.
Duleep de Chimera, Colombo’s Anglican bishop, also expressed his “solidarity with the monks’ protest in Myanmar.”
In an open letter to the Burmese ambassador he praised “the commendable leadership provided by the Buddhist monks of Myanmar to this mass agitation” and told the ambassador: “Your Excellency, please convey to your Government my grave concern at the brutal repression of legitimate protest.”
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