They say that hegemonies, like humans, have a lifespan, and that a new one will come to replace the old once the latter expires. We can see this in the current peaceful protest led by Burmese monks against the country’s military junta. After four decades of dictatorship, the regime is finally being challenged by what many consider the nation’s highest moral authorities; we can only speculate as to the reasons why they did not act earlier.

The government declared a dawn to dusk curfew on the 26th of September, in a bid to control the protest. Ignoring the curfew, Burmese monks and citizens took to the streets of Yangon. The protest then took a turn for the worse as soldiers fired tear gas and hit out at unarmed protesters with their batons in order to break up the crowds. Apart from fueling the anti-governmental sentiments of the protesters, the military regime’s violence on its people now has the world paying attention to the current political situation in Myanmar.

The important thing to ask is: why have the monks turned political? One possible reason might be that ascetic, otherworldly beings as they are, as they are deemed to be, they are nonetheless humans, and as human beings, they have this inherent drive to fight (or take flight) when a situation is not in their favour. Commendably, they have chosen the former. Another way to see it could be that they are reacting out of the great love they have for their country and their fellow-citizens, all of whom are suffering under the military junta. The words on a banner carried by some of the Burmese monks-in-protest sum it up: “Sufficiency in food, clothing and shelter, national reconciliation, freedom for all political prisoners.”

From video clips and photos taken of the protest and posted on the Internet, one can see the protesting monks moving like a human traffic along the streets of Yangon and Mandalay, two of the major cities in Myanmar. The monks wear red or burnt-orange robes, a stark and symbolic contrast to the current bleak political climate of the country. Like a red river snaking through the metropolis, the monks bring life and set emotions rising wherever they trend; the people would join in the protest or put their palms together in prayer and hope whenever they see the monks marching pass. Some pictures even show protesters tending to wounds that their comrades have sustained from encounters with the military. The power of collective behaviour in times of great social change is never to be underestimated.

The dictatorship that the military generals enjoy in Myanmar is long overdue; it ought to have climaxed when the regime decided to dishonour the 1990 general election results and placed Aung San Suu Kyi (whose party won the election) under house arrest. The fact that they did not probably implies that the Burmese, like their rightful leader Aung San Suu Kyi, prefer peace to political unrest. The fact that they are reacting now surely indicates that the peace they so yearn for can only be arrived at through certain sacrifices.

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