More than 100 monks march in Myanmar for first time since crackdown

Buddhist monks in northern Myanmar, whose militancy helped propel September's pro-democracy demonstrations, took to the streets again Wednesday in the first such action since the ruling junta violently crushed the protest movement. More than 100 monks peacefully marched for nearly an hour in Pakokku, chanting a Buddhist prayer that has come to be associated with the pro-democracy cause. The monks did not carry signs or shout slogans, but their action was obviously in defiance of the military government, as a monk made clear in a radio interview. "We are continuing our protest from last month, as we have not yet achieved any of the demands we asked for," the monk told the Democratic Voice of Burma, a Norway-based short-wave radio station and Web site run by dissident journalists.