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Four months after huge protests erupted
against the military regime, Burma marked 60 years of independence
from Britain by flooding Rangoon, its biggest city, with uniformed
and plainclothes policemen.
Riot police took up positions outside the
city hall and Shwedagon and Sule pagodas, all of which were the
focus of protests in September. City residents reported seeing
groups of officers clustered at bus stops and on street
corners.
Official celebrations were low key. Senior
figures in the junta watched as the national flag was raised in a
park near Shwedagon pagoda and a brief, patriotic message by the
junta's supreme leader, Senior General Than Shwe, 75, was read
out.
Ignoring the democratic opposition which
won a crushing victory in elections held in 1990, General Shwe
called for the country's co-operation in building "a
discipline-flourishing democratic state".
Meanwhile dozens of members of the
National League for Democracy (NLD), the opposition party whose
leader Aung San Suu Kyi has spent more than 12 years under house
arrest, demonstrated silently outside their party headquarters
wearing the prison uniform of dark blue longyi and pale blue shirts
with the words "Free Political Prisoners" written on the back.
About 350 people including Western diplomats gathered for the
sombre ceremony, closely observed by members of a civilian militia
force.
"We have not given up on the chance of
dialogue," the NLD party spokesman Nyan Win told Reuters. "We do
hope dialogue takes place and national reconciliation emerges in
2008. We want 2008 to be the year of reconciliation." The party
called for the immediate release of all political prisoners and
monks "who peacefully demonstrated their beliefs and wishes" in the
protests last year.
In a new attempt to hamper access to free
information of ordinary Burmese, the junta has hoisted the price of
annual satellite television licences from 6,000 kyat (£3) per
year to 1 million kyat (£500), a 166-fold increase. People
with existing licences who fail to pay the steep new charge within
a month of expiry will face fines of 30,000 kyats. Many Burmese
followed last year's demonstrations and their violent suppression
on satellite news channels and the regime has described foreign
news broadcasts as "a skyful of lies".
Up to 50 Burmese monks will be among
protesters gathering at Marble Arch in London at noon today for a
silent march across the city. "After 60 years of independence,
Burmese people are not free to walk or talk," said U Uttara, one of
the organisers, himself a monk and UK secretary of the
International Burmese Monks' Organisation.
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