BANGKOK - For years, Western campaigners against Myanmar's ruling generals have struggled to rise above the B-list of world causes.
They looked on as Darfur, climate change and HIV/AIDS grabbed more headlines, more cash, lured marquee celebrity activists and caught the ear of world leaders. That all changed last week.
As images of the bloody crackdown against anti-junta protesters fuelled global outrage, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called a London-based activist group to offer his help.
"So far this year, the British Foreign Office hadn't even bothered to reply to our letters; now the Prime Minister is on the phone to us," said Mark Farmaner, spokesman for the Burma Campaign U.K.
"The impact for us has been incredible."
In the first days of the crackdown, in which diplomats believe many more than junta's admitted 10 people were killed, Farmaner's group received up to 600 phone calls a day from journalists, crashing its voice mail system.
"Our printer broke. Laptop died. Even the camp bed I had in the office fell apart," he said.
Their Web site, www.burmacampaign.org.uk, has had more hits in the past week than over an entire year. An on-line appeal for donations netted $20,000 in the first week, equal to six months' normal donations.
"Up until now we had been having a difficult year financially, with donations lower than usual," Farmaner said.
International sympathy for the Myanmar protesters -- the junta admits more than 1,400 are still detained -- has energised a street campaign that never gained traction despite the iconic image of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, often described as Asia's Nelson Mandela.
"DAY OF ACTION"
In some Western and Asian capitals, thousands have marched to the embassies of Myanmar and China, seen as a key backer of the regime and its defender in the U.N. Security Council, where only handfuls of diehard demonstrators had gone before.
