Western observers in Rangoon said 30,000 people were on the streets of the capital, chanting slogans demanding a return to democracy, the removal of the new ruling party leader, General Sein Lwin, and restoration of human rights.
'The army is our army,' others shouted as they paraded behind nationalist and old student union flags, some with placards with the portrait of Aung Gyi, the most prominent government critic who was gaoled last week.
With large crowds flocking into the capital from outlying areas and separate crowds marching simultaneously in different parts of the city, some suggested that scores of thousands of people participated.
At the same time Burma radio reported demonstrations in a staggering list of cities and towns - Pegu, Taungoo, Minbu, Pakkoku, Yenangyaung, Sagaing, mandalay and, in the far north, even the civil war-embattled city of Myitkyina.
In much of the country the demonstrations appear to have been peaceful, but there was shooting in Mandalay and Mergui, pushing a death toll, already standing at over 200 after five month of protests, inexorably higher.
At least seven people died in weekend violence and the state radio acknowledged yesterday that another four people had died and 12 had been wounded.
In Rangoon, the crowds were orderly and good natured - 'there was a lot of laughing and smiling,' one Western diplomat reported. Troops lined the streets early in the morning but as the size and number of demonstrations swelled they discreetly withdrew to trucks and armoured vehicles.
Foreigners caught up in the crowds found themselves effusively thanked and applauded for their presence, especially those taking photographs.
Many factores and businesses shut down as workers walked out for the day, though deplomats said that the closures stopped short of the general strike called for in pamphlets circulating during the past week. Some shops which closed as the demonstrators poured through the city reopened later in the day.
But the show of support for the demonstrations, making a mockery of the martial law proclaimed in Rangoon last Wednesday, vividly illustrated the dilemma now confronting the leadership.
The level at which protests continue after yesterday's events remains to be seen, but the demonstrations now appear to be generating a momentum of their own, liberating popular resentments buried for the last quarter of a century by a mixture of fear and inertia.
Nobody, clearly, was much impressed by last week's arrest of 149 people by the authorities who said they had now uncovered those who are pulling the strings. Yesterday's marches were no longer confined to a hard core of students supported by urban youth but drew on a broad cross-section of society.
Most dangerously for the regime, the demonstrations are daily exposing the bluntness of the main weapon, brute force, so freely used in the past to crush opposition. The temper of the student opposition appears to have reached a pitch where they are resolved to face the bullets and bayonets of the military if they have to.
The authorities have responded with extraordinary restraint by the standards of the regime that only last month said the army would not hesitate to adopt shoot-to-kill tactics to deal with distrubances.
The new policy, diplomats in Rangoon suggest, is part of an attempt to convince the public that a real change of leadership and policy has occurred.
But it may also reflect a realisation that opening fire on crowds drawn from all walks of life could snap the last threads of popular restraint.
It could also crack open the cohesion and discipline of an army in which the junior ranks are already expressing discontent with the leadership and the conditions of service.
The government is being pushed by Sein Lwin to introduce economic reforms that are being cautiously welcomed by the business community, despite ingrained scepticism after 26 years of muddled authoritarianism.
The political upheavals, however, are further complicating the already delicate task of ironing out the deep-rooted anomalies in the economy.
The declaration of martial law produced overnight increases in the prices of many commodities. Burma produces sufficient food to feed its 38 million people, yet hoarding and the fragile system of distribution are causing shortages and pushing prices of essential items beyond the reach of the worst off.
The old cliches that adequate supplies of food helped keep Burma stable even in the face of Ne Win's idiosyncratic and repressive rule no longer apply. 'There are now some without food,' one diplomat reported. 'It has rocked a lot of people.'
