Friday, September 28, 2007

Monks on the March

Dear Friends,

If you don't know what the title of this post is referring to, it means you have not been reading the news or have not even looked at a newspaper in the past 2 days. It's time you did!

In solidarity with our Burmese brothers and sisters who are protesting the military junta in Burma, please wear RED today.

Red for the colour of the blood in the streets, in the temples, trickling down the shaved heads of the monks on the march.
Red for the passion of their struggle, for the fire in their souls and the courage they display on the streets they want to reclaim from the soldiers who have shot at and even killed some of them.

Read about the stand off between army/govt and these saints in saffron here and here and here. Even in KL, we had our own demonstration outside the Burmese embassy this morning, here.

For me, it is impossible to see and read about these valiant monks who are willing to die for their struggle, and not be ashamed about our apathy here in Malaysia. We have much to fight for and our foes are not even that formidable or violent and yet, we are content to be complacent.

I hope the monks will inspire all of us to do what is right at all costs.

4 comments:

Mc Chaoz said...

Latest news... Our deputy prime minister said "Saya minta rakyat malaysia supaya jangan masuk campur dalam urusan dalaman di Burma. Jangan nak adakan tunjuk perasaan dan lain-lain lagi." The reason he said this is because he is scared that this might happen here. I believe this is the best way to get peoples attention. Now everyone in the world is talking about it. Therefore "someone" is scared this might influence the citizens here to protest. That is the only reason he made a stupid statment like that.

amy2kyo said...

you mean things like hartal? haha.

Carmen N said...

No matter what he says, there were still thousands of people protesting in solidarity with the Burmese last Friday, in KL, in front of the Burmese embassy.

What was apparent at that demo was how powerful and loud and strong people's voices can be, when marshalled in support of something good and just.

The sad thing is that a lot of the demonstrators were Burmese refugees living in KL. Even though a lot of them are illegal, they still came to the forefront to support their fellow countrymonks. This is indeed courageous.

If you watch the news about the protests all over the world, you cannot help but notice that the Indonesian and Filipino university students were leading the demonstrations, and some willingly allowed their heads to be shaved in front of the demo in a symbolic display of solidarity.

And meanwhile, what were Malaysian university students doing? Well, some of them were at the demo but most of them were busy holidaying. And quite a few didn't even know what I was referring to when I asked them to wear red on Friday.

Sigh...

ViViEnNe said...

but i still think a peaceful demo SHUD NT B BANNED...i guess d early demo r all peaceful bt they still kill..what la..dictatorship is more like it..