Myanmar protests mild

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Recent protests over fuel price increases in Myanmar present no immediate threat to the country's military rulers because few people participated and key organizers were swiftly detained, analysts said Sunday.

Angered by the doubling of fuel prices earlier this month, activists launched a week's worth of rare street demonstrations in the tightly-controlled nation's main city, Yangon, starting Aug. 19.

The military junta -- long criticized internationally for human rights violations -- responded by detaining at least 65 people, including leaders of the 88 Generation Students and the Myanmar Development Committee, two pro-democracy groups.

On Sunday, a Myanmar diplomat said the government slashed state subsidies of fuel costs because it could not afford them amid rising global oil prices.

The protest marches were mainly limited to Yangon, and attendance ranged from a few dozen hardened activists to a few hundred people. Crowds cheered the demonstrators, but few joined in.

"Although the public probably is behind the relatively few demonstrators in the streets, I do not think that now the people as a whole are ready in any major way to risk their lives," said David Steinberg, a Myanmar expert at Georgetown University in Washington.

"The chances are that small demonstrations may continue for a bit, but major ones are unlikely," Steinberg said via e-mail. "By allowing small demonstrations, the military may be trying to fend off larger ones."

The impact of the fuel price hike on Myanmar's economy has exposed the already impoverished public to further hardship, partly through higher bus fares and food prices, including for rice. According to the United Nations, Myanmar -- also known as Burma -- is considered one of the poorest countries in Asia.

In a tacit acknowledgement that rising prices were hurting the regime, the junta on Thursday reduced some bus fares.

Josef Silverstein, a Myanmar expert and retired professor from Rutgers University, noted that the junta's decision to clamp down on the organizers has failed to spark anything more than routine condemnations from the U.N. and foreign governments.

"The Burma military has been busy winning the indifference of foreign states to their behavior toward their own people," he said. "Burma is willing and able to see off or give away at bargain prices the natural resources, oil, gas, timber ... at the expense of the nation and its people."

Since liberalizing its investment code in 1988, Myanmar has signed a number of energy deals with its neighbors, including China, India, South Korea and Thailand. Desperate for energy to fuel their growing economies, these countries have ignored the country's dismal human rights record.

A Myanmar diplomat said Sunday the government slashed subsidies because it could no longer afford them amid steep world oil price increases.

"The government has no recourse but to remove the subsidies," said Thaung Tun, Myanmar's ambassador to Manila, on the sidelines of a meeting of Association of Southeast Asian Nations officials in the Philippines. "It's not politics."

Analysts and activists have offered a range of other possible explanations about the hike.

Some believe it was needed to remedy a cash shortage after the government spent heavily relocating its capital 250 miles from Yangon to Naypyidaw in 2005.

Aung Zaw, the editor of Irrawaddy, an independent newsmagazine based in Thailand that reports on Myanmar-related issues, wrote Friday that the price hike may have been an attempt to make fuel distribution more profitable, paving the way for its ultimate privatization.

Since 1989, the government embarked on a series of economic liberalization measures to restore some aspects of the free market including selling off some state-run industries including textile and cosmetic plants.

Analysts say events this past week paled in comparison to 1988, when demonstrations took place nationwide, food was scarce, and elements within the bureaucracy, Buddhist community and military came out in support of the protesters.

The army violently subdued those protests, killing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people.

The junta held a general election in 1990, but refused to honor the results when the National League for Democracy -- led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains under house arrest -- won in a landslide.

"The present demonstrations are important, but nothing like the scale of 1988," Steinberg said.