Toronto Star : Burmese roundup continues

Burmese roundup continues

Prisoners taken away by the truckload after midnight raids

Reuters | October 3, 2007

RANGOON – Troops in Burma hauled away truckloads of people today after the departure of a UN envoy trying to end a ruthless crackdown on pro-democracy rallies that has sparked international outrage.

In one house near the Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon, the holiest shrine in the Buddhist nation and a focal point of last week's monk-led marches, only a 13-year-old girl remained.

Her parents were taken, she said. "They warned us not to run away as they might be back," she said after people from rows of shophouses were ordered into the street in the middle of the night.

Witnesses said at least eight truckloads of prisoners were taken from central Rangoon, the former Burma's biggest city, where crowds of up to 100,000 people had protested against decades of military rule and deepening economic hardship.

A staff member of the UN Development Fund and her husband and brother-in-law were among those arrested, UN spokeswoman Michele Montas said in New York. The United Nations was appealing to Burma's UN mission to secure her release.

The crackdown continued despite some hopes of progress by UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari on his mission to persuade junta chief Than Shwe to relax his grip and open talks with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whom Gambari met twice.

Singapore, the current chair of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), said it "was encouraged by the access and cooperation" given by the junta to Gambari.

The envoy was in Singapore on his way back to New York but is likely to say nothing in public before he briefs UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The protests – the biggest challenge to the junta since it killed an estimated 3,000 people while crushing an uprising in 1988 – began with small marches against fuel price rises in August and swelled after troops fired over the heads of monks.

Gambari was expected to return to Burma in early November, UN sources said.

But there were no signs how his mission and international pressure might change the policies of a junta which seldom heeds outside pressure, has endured years of sanctions by Western governments and rarely admits UN officials.

"The top leadership is so entrenched in their views that it's not going to help," said David Steinberg, a Burma expert at Georgetown University in Washington. "They will say they are on the road to democracy and so what do you want anyway?"

The first step of the junta's "seven-step road to democracy" was completed in September with the end of an on-off, 14-year national convention which produced guidelines for a constitution that critics say will entrench military rule and exclude Suu Kyi from office.

Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the U.S. Senate, said Washington and its allies must continue to press other members of the UN Security Council for "a strong resolution against the Burmese regime."

China, the closest the junta has to a friend, has made rare public calls for restraint but rules out supporting any UN sanctions against Burma. Russia, like China a veto-wielding member of the Security Council, also opposes sanctions.

John Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, saw little chance of action by the Security Council but said much more could be done to "debilitate Burma's ability to participate in international financial markets."

"We need to get ASEAN and the European Union on board with this and then China will have to decide whether it wants to pay the price in the bilateral relationship with the United States for continuing to condone Burma's activities," Bolton said.

The junta says the instability was met with "the least force possible" and that Rangoon and other cities had returned to normal. It says 10 people were killed and describes reports of much higher tolls and atrocities as a "skyful of lies."

In Brussels, EU ambassadors agreed to toughen existing sanctions against Burma and look at trade bans on its key timber, metals and gems sectors, officials and diplomats said.

"There was full agreement on reinforcing existing measures," one diplomat said of the decision, which will be sent to EU foreign ministers for approval in mid-October.

"On the second measures, a number of member states took the view it should be done only after further information was obtained, particularly on how they would affect the local population."

The junta appears to believe it has suppressed the uprising, with barricades around the Shwedagon and Sule pagodas lifted and an overnight curfew eased by two hours.

Eighty monks and 149 women believed to be nuns swept up in widespread raids were released. Five local journalists, one working for Japan's Tokyo Shimbun newspaper, were also freed.

A heavy armed presence remained on the streets of Rangoon and Mandalay, the second city, witnesses said. The junta was also sending gangs through homes looking for monks in hiding, raids Western diplomats say are creating a climate of terror.