Yangon, Myanmar - Buddhist monks in army-ruled Myanmar are threatening to shun the military unless the junta apologises for a crackdown on monks who joined anti-government protests last week, media reports said on Tuesday.
A previously unknown group said it would urge monks to refuse to accept alms from members of the regime or tend to the religious needs of their families if its demands were not met by next week, the reports said.
"These demands must be met by September 17. Otherwise Buddhist monks will ban religious service to the government," the Myanmar-language service of U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported.
The group, which the Thailand-based Irrawaddy magazine says calls itself the "Alliance of all Burma Buddhist Monks", wants an apology for soldiers firing warning shots over the heads of several hundred demonstrating monks in the town of Pakokku, 600 km (370 miles) northwest of Yangon.
The reports could not be independently confirmed by Reuters and there was no certainty the group represented monks.
"It's hard to say for sure whether this announcement was really made by the Buddhist monks or it really represents the majority of the Buddhist monks," a retired official said.
The reports said the group had also demanded a reduction in last month's shock increases of fuel prices -- some by as much as 500 percent -- which triggered the most sustained anti-government protests in years.
It called on the regime to release all political prisoners, including detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and resume talks with pro-democracy groups. The generals, mindful of the major role monks played in pro-democracy protests between 1988-90, has stepped up surveillance of monasteries in Mandalay, Sittwe, Myitgyina, Pakokku, residents said.
The junta has reacted harshly to boycotts by monks in the past.
In 1990, thousands were detained after many monks refused to perform religious rites for soldiers or their families following military crackdowns on the democracy movement.
The military, which has ruled the former Burma since 1962, appears determined to squash this latest dissent.
It has detained 13 dissidents, most of them leaders of the 88 Generation Student Group who spent long years in jail after the uprising, for organising protests.
The government has accused Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy of fuelling the unrest and threatened it with unspecified action.
The crackdown, one of the harshest since 1988, has drawn withering criticism from the United States and European Union, and unusually strong words from Myanmar's Asian neighbours.