Cowed and afraid, people in Myanmar marked exactly 20 years since the army crushed an "8-8-88" democracy uprising with the loss of an estimated 3,000 lives, although the only protests were outside the country.
After last year's widespread fuel-price rallies, the generals in charge of the former Burma were taking no chances, posting armed police and pro-government thugs at strategic sites around Yangon, such as the gilded Shwedagon pagoda.
Most of the leaders of the 1988 uprising, the biggest challenge to army rule dating back to 1962, have been behind bars since the start of the fuel-price demonstrations last August. They are just a few of an estimated 1,100 political prisoners.
"We are not planning any official ceremony, although some people might choose to do something in private," Nyan Win, a spokesman for the opposition National League for Democracy, said.
Others concurred, citing the daily struggle to survive in one of Asia's poorest nations and a sense of the futility of protest that has lingered since 1988 and last year's crackdown, in which at least 31 people were killed.
"Nobody is happy with the present situation, but most people know from experience that protests will not change their lives," English teacher Hla Maung told Reuters.
Outside the pariah Southeast Asian nation, however, human rights groups and activists who fled the 1988 bloodshed staged demonstrations outside Myanmar and Chinese embassies.
In Bangkok, dozens of protesters chanted anti-junta slogans, burnt Myanmar flags and waved placards calling for the release of democracy icon and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest in Yangon.
In the Philippine capital Manila, activists from the Free Burma Coalition and Amnesty International criticised Chinese support for the junta.
About 40 activists marched with mock Olympic torches to the Chinese embassy, calling on China to use the Games to improve human rights.
"Remember the atrocities"
China is being targeted on what is also the opening day of the Beijing Olympic Games because of its commercial and diplomatic ties to the generals, gate-keepers of Myanmar's plentiful reserves of natural gas and other resources.
"As the world celebrates the opening of the Beijing Olympics, people should pause to remember the atrocities in Burma 20 years ago," Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
"This anniversary is testament to the Burmese people's enduring demand for freedom and to the world's failure to end repressive military rule. And China, more than any other country, has enabled the survival of the brutal Burmese regime," she said.
August 8, 1988 -- 8-8-88 -- was chosen as the focus of the uprising because of its numerologically auspicious connotations for most Burmese. It was also said to be a powerful foil to then military supremo Ne Win, whose lucky number was nine.
Yesterday, US President George W. Bush used a visit to neighbouring Thailand, home to more than 100,000 Myanmar refugees and more than a million migrant workers, to highlight the 1988 bloodshed and call yet again for Suu Kyi's release.
"The American people care deeply about the people of Burma and dream for the day the people will be free," he told dissidents and former political prisoners at an hour-long lunch.
He also heard criticism of Washington's stance towards Myanmar -- labelled an "outpost of tyranny" by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- for forcing the generals into the international isolation that junta supremo Than Shwe craves.
"I asked him to engage with the Burmese military," activist Aung Naing Oo, who fled for his life 20 years ago, said. "It's only Than Shwe and a few other generals who want to isolate Burma, so I told him engagement was very important."