Yangon, Sept. 18 (Reuters): Authorities in military-ruled Myanmar fired tear gas today to break up a protest of around 1,000 Buddhist monks and civilian demonstrators in the northwestern city of Sittwe, a witness said.

Three or four monks were arrested as the crowd scattered and were hit and slapped, the witness said.

The march, one of several in response to a call for a nationwide religious boycott of the former Burma’s ruling military, started with 500 Buddhist monks but grew quickly as ordinary men and women — some of them Muslims — joined in.

In Yangon, authorities closed the famed Shwedagon Pagoda, the southeast Asian nation’s holiest shrine, minutes before hundreds of monks arrived for the launch of a campaign to refuse to accept alms from anyone connected to the regime. “We could not hold the formal ceremony to impose the religious boycott because we could not enter the Shwedagon compound,” a 25-year-old monk said. The demonstrators then marched peacefully to the city centre, chanting prayers but no political slogans.

Plainclothes police and members of the feared Union Solidarity and Development Association shadowed their route. The USDA has played a prominent role in breaking up protests against soaring fuel prices that began four weeks ago.

They videotaped and photographed the monks, who were also watched by hundreds of people, some of whom paid obeisance to them, witnesses said. There were no arrests.