Groups of Myanmar exiles, former political prisoners and monks who left Myanmar over the years, are organising hunger strikes, signing petitions and holding prayer meetings and candle-light vigils across the world, including in Singapore.

'So that the world does not forget Burma for another 20 years,' said Mr Yaza, 30, a Burmese shopowner at Singapore's Peninsula Plaza, also known as 'Little Myanmar' for its plethora of businesses selling Yangon's best.

There are about 30,000 Burmese people in Singapore, according to the Myanmar Embassy.

They are supporting the pro-democracy struggle back home in little ways - distributing T-shirts with the message 'Concern for Myanmar', talking to the media and organising petitions calling for 'stern action' against the regime.

In Germany, 53-year-old Ko Sonny, a former political prisoner heading the Burma Bureau's Frankfurt branch, echoes Mr Yaza's words, saying: 'We have to continue to try and persuade the international community to act.'

Over the weekend, demonstrators took to the streets in cities from London to Bangkok in protest against Myanmar's bloody crackdown.

The seeds of overseas Burmese groups were sown in 1988, when Myanmar's military brutally smothered a pro-democracy uprising.

Some opponents of the regime managed to flee, and others who were released later left quietly to avoid being re-arrested, re-emerging as asylum-seekers in Bangladesh, India, China, Malaysia, and neighbouring Thailand.

Prior to that, in 1984, Myanmar's ethnic minority groups had begun fleeing to Thailand as a result of conflict with the regime over their demands for regional autonomy or independence. Thailand is home to about two million Burmese migrant workers and 150,000 refugees.

Others fled much further.

'Refugees, especially from the border area, have resettled in the US, Europe, Australia and Canada,' says Dr Ashin Nayaka, founder of the Buddhist Missionary Society in New York, who leads a daily rally in front of the UN headquarters demanding a peacekeeping force be sent to Myanmar.

Last year, the Bush administration authorised a waiver of immigration rules to allow the resettlement of several thousand Burmese refugees.

Apart from the refugees and exiled political dissidents are those who have fled for economic reasons.

Concerned and angry, these groups 'are now desperate to do something,' says Mr Zaw Oo, a Myanmar researcher at Washington's American University.

Buddhist monks who have fled Myanmar over the years are among those speaking up.

'I feel very sorry' about the situation at home and India's continued support of the military junta, says Reverend Pinyadaza, a monk who lives as a refugee in New Delhi. He decided to leave in 1999 after two of his friends were arrested by the military for participating in a pro-democracy rally.

Expatriates who still hold Myanmar passports are also joining the fight.

'The more the regime brutalised the population at home, the more united the Burmese outside the country got,' says Mr Oo.

They have even prodded non-Burmese solidarity groups like the Buddhist Fellowship in Singapore and the South African Council of Churches in Cape Town to issue statements to support the monks in Myanmar.

'Outside groups also pass on to the people inside what the opinion of the international community is, and can advise them on what their demands should be,' says Mr Zin Linn of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma.

The government in exile was set up in Manerplaw, near the Thai-Myanmar border in December 1990 after the military junta rejected the result of a general election. It comprises 34 exiled MPs currently based in the US, Australia, Holland, Norway, Thailand and India.

The exile movement also benefits from a wide variety of specialised groups, including media, youth organisations, women's organisations and think-tanks, representing a diverse growth of civil society organisations across the Burmese diaspora, says Mr Oo.

They have actively made use of the international media, giving interviews and writing opinion pieces, to get their anger and frustration at the situation back home across to the wider world.

Most of these groups receive funding from Western countries. For instance, the National Endowment for Democracy, a non-profit organisation in the US, funds the Sydney-based Radio-Free Burma, the online Democratic Voice of Burma in Oslo and India's Mizzima News website.

And according to Ms Debbie Stodhard, coordinator of the Bangkok-based Alternative Asean on Burma, the junta has been 'shocked' by the strength of protests overseas.

'They did not anticipate that people in Burma would keep in touch with these groups,' she told The Straits Times.

nilasen@sph.com.sg