Thousands of monks have been forced to leave their monasteries in the past two years. Many have gone back to their home villages. Others have gone abroad. But hundreds are still in jail, says David Mathieson from Human Rights Watch in Bangkok: "From what we were able to document at least from figures a month or two ago there were 237 Buddhist monks in prison and about 35 or so Buddhist nuns. Several monks were released in the so-called amnesty recently but we’re waiting to see what the final figure is."

Tighter control of monasteries

The 100-page document by Human Rights Watch says that the military government started exercising greater control of the monasteries after its brutal suppression of peaceful protests two years ago. In September 2007, Buddhist monks led thousands of people onto the streets of Myanmar to call for freedom and democracy. The military government has tightened its control of the monasteries and brought an end to some of the health and social projects monks have set up in Yangon and other regions. Bertil Lintner, who wrote the HRW report, says the number of monks in Yangon's monasteries has decreased considerably:

"Monasteries that used to have hundreds of monks have only dozens of monks left. I wouldn’t dare to estimate how many of them have gone home -- but many are dead! And certainly especially in the run-up to this election next year security all over the country has been tightened and the monks have been told to register in a much more organised fashion than the case was before. So they are also using this election to impose restrictions and controls because they realise if anything’s going to happen in this election, it is quite possible that the students or the monks or both will take some kind of initiative."

Skepticism about the planned elections

But David Mathieson from Human Rights Watch says he is not very hopeful about change of any kind: "I think there’s a kind of optimism that the elections next year will bring some kind of positive change and we want to remind people that there will be no positive change until all these political prisoners are released and until the monks in Burma can actually fulfil the role that they’re there to fulfil which is to provide spiritual and social welfare support to the population."

The HRW report concludes that resistance against Myanmar’s junta is not broken but it insists that the international community has to put pressure on the regime to ensure that it takes political reform seriously after the elections.

Author: Bernd Musch-Borowska / Anne Thomas
Editor: Thomas Bärthlein