All Burma Monks' Alliance (abbreviated ABMA) is a coalition of monks in

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

, representing the All Burma Young Monks' Union, the Federation of all Burma Monks' Union, the Rangoon Young Monks' Union and the Sangha Duta Council of Burma. It was founded on 9 September 2007, at the start of the

Saffron Revolution The Saffron Revolution ( my, ရွှေဝါရောင်တော်လှန်ရေး) was a series of economic and political protests and demonstrations that took place during August, September, and October 2007 in Myanmar. The pro ...

, after monks were brutalized at protests in

Sittwe Sittwe (; ; formerly Akyab) is the capital of Rakhine State, Myanmar (Burma). Sittwe, pronounced ''sait-tway'' in the Rakhine language, is located on an estuarial island created at the confluence of the Kaladan, Mayu, and Lay Mro rivers emptyi ...

and

Pakokku Pakokku ( my, ပခုက္ကူမြို့, ) is the largest city in the Magway Region of Myanmar. It is situated about 30 km north-east of Bagan on the Irrawaddy River. It is the administration seat of Pakokku Township , Pakokku Distric ...

. ABMA made several key demands to the ruling

State Peace and Development Council The State Peace and Development Council ( my, နိုင်ငံတော် အေးချမ်းသာယာရေး နှင့် ဖွံ့ဖြိုးရေး ကောင်စီ ; abbreviated SPDC or , ) was the offi ...

(SPDC), including a formal apology to the

Sangha Sangha is a Sanskrit word used in many Indian languages, including Pali meaning "association", "assembly", "company" or "community"; Sangha is often used as a surname across these languages. It was historically used in a political context t ...

, a reduction on fuel and commodity prices, release of

political prisoner A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although n ...

s including

Aung San Suu Kyi Aung San Suu Kyi (; ; born 19 June 1945) is a Burmese politician, diplomat, author, and a 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as State Counsellor of Myanmar (equivalent to a prime minister) and Minister of Foreign Affairs from ...

, and dialogue with pro-democracy leaders for national reconciliation. On September 21 it escalated its demands, promising to "banish the common enemy evil regime from Burmese soil forever", which was met with a violent crackdown. Leaders such as

U Gambira Nyi Nyi Lwin (; born 19 June 1979), more widely known by his monastic name U Gambira ( my, ရှင်ဂမ္ဘီရ), is a former Buddhist monk, activist and a leader of the All-Burma Monks' Alliance, a group which helped lead the 200 ...

were imprisoned and tortured, while others became refugees or went into hiding. Outside of Myanmar, the ABMA supports refugee monks who fled retribution from the Burmese junta. 38 of these monks were relocated to the United States, but by 2010, all but eight had ceased to be practicing monks. In 2016 the executive-director-in-exile of the ABMA was U Pyinya Zawta, who lived in

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from South ...

at the time.

References

{{myanmar-stub Buddhism in Myanmar Political organisations based in Myanmar Buddhist charities Religious organizations established in 2007

See also

References