UPDATE / THE ROAD FROM MANDALAY : Myanmar Crackdown Intensifies : Military authorities crush monks’ protest and arrest opposition politicians.

The military authorities in Myanmar appear to have crushed a potentially divisive boycott by Buddhist monks, while at the same time intensifying a crackdown on opposition politicians, according to diplomats in the country.

The actions are taking place nearly six months after candidates of the National League for Democracy, the country’s leading opposition group, won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections. The moves suggest that the military has little intention of handing over power any time soon.

According to figures compiled by one embassy, the government has arrested 52 league officials since late October, including 18 newly elected members of the People’s Assembly and four members of the league’s central executive committee. Most were accused of inciting unrest against the ruling State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), as the militaryregime that seized power in September, 1988, calls itself.

Both the arrests and the boycott appeared to be connected with a demonstration Aug. 8 in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, to commemorate the second anniversary of the democracy movement in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. Four people, two of them monks, were reported killed when troops opened fire during that demonstration.

After the incident, a number of monasteries in Mandalay announced a boycott in which monks refused to minister to members of the armed forces and their families, such as presiding at weddings and funerals. Myanmar is overwhelmingly Buddhist and the boycott, which soon spread to the capital of Yangon and other towns, threatened to undermine rank-and-file morale in the army.

Such a confrontation has been brewing for several years since monks have been at the forefront of the new democracy movement.

The military government accused the Burmese Communist Party of inciting the boycott. Gen. Saw Maung, chairman of the ruling council, warned that he would take measures “to ensure that the religion remains pure” if the boycott did not end.

On Oct. 20, Saw Maung issued an order dissolving Buddhist organizations that “through their deeds, words and publications are threatening, blackmailing and boycotting the state government.” Those violating the order were threatened with being defrocked.

In addition, army troops raided monasteries in Mandalay and Yangon, formerly known as Rangoon, seizing evidence of alleged illegal activities. About 150 monks were arrested.

Faced with a frontal assault on their authority, the country’s senior clergy capitulated and ordered an end to the boycott.

The government issued a new law on religion that established an officially sanctioned hierarchy, or Sangha, for Buddhists and imposed prison sentences of from six months to three years for any monks found to be disobedient.

The assault on league officials also appeared to be connected with the Mandalay disturbances. For example, a government spokesman said that Ohn Kyaing, a member of the league’s central executive committee for Mandalay, and Thein Dan, a member of its Mandalay organizing committee, each had been sentenced to seven years in prison for inciting unrest.

The wave of arrests leaves only four of the league’s 10-member central executive committee out of jail. The league’s chairman, former general Tin Oo, was sentenced to three years at hard labor in July, 1989, and the group’s charismatic general secretary, Aung San Suu Kyi, is being held under house arrest in Yangon.

In a clear indication that the military will no longer accept Aung San Suu Kyi as a political adversary, it reprinted in the state-controlled press a newspaper article from Bangkok that said that she would be released from detention if she agrees to leave for Britain. Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of independence hero Aung San, is married to a Briton.

The London-based human rights group Amnesty International said in a report issued Wednesday that “thousands of critics and opponents of the government, including many prisoners of conscience, have been detained without trial or imprisoned since the SLORC took power” and said that torture of inmates has been widely reported. A Western diplomat in Yangon said that at least 1,000 political prisoners are being held in Yangon’s Insein Prison.