In disgust for the junta, Burmese are united
By Choe Sang-Hun | October 29, 2007
YANGON, Myanmar: By Burmese standards, life has been good for the three friends, buddies from the Defense Services Academy, the alma mater of many of the generals who ordered the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Myanmar last month. Two of them own factories; the third works for an airline, a coveted job in this country.
Still, when their late-afternoon chat in a Yangon office turned to Senior General Than Shwe, these veterans in their 50s could hardly conceal their loathing.
"When I was an army officer, my soldiers and I went out every day to fight Communists," said one of the men, who runs a factory in southern Myanmar. "What do they do now? They bring soldiers from the border, feed them with food, drugs and rum, and they run them like dogs, fighting their own people."
During a recent trip to Myanmar, it was hard to find anyone who liked the junta. Burmese journalists detested the government censors, who read their articles days or even weeks before they were allowed to be published. Farmers and taxi drivers alike commonly volunteered: "Our government no good!" Or, when asked their opinions, said with an uneasy face: "Better not to say."
But some of the harshest criticism came from relatively affluent people like the three veterans - an indication of how the junta has alienated not only the people its policies have condemned to poverty, but also some of Myanmar's better-off.
"My friends, their relatives, their sons and daughters - they all don't like the government," said the owner of the factory in the south.
"Because of our background, we know how the generals' minds work. They seize power and crush anyone who comes in their way. They don't care about the economy. They don't care about the people. They only know their military ways."
The three veterans left active service around 1988, when disillusion with the government's "Burmese way to socialism" culminated in a mass uprising that the government suppressed with bloodshed.
Since then, working in the private sector, they say they have seen how what some have called the "Burmese way to capitalism," led by Than Shwe's junta, has merely stuffed the pockets of ruling generals and businessmen close to them, who monopolize lucrative gas and timber deals while leaving most of the rest of the population mired in poverty.
"The junta will never change unless the generals and their families are hurt," said one of the veterans, who owns a factory in Yangon.
None of the three saw a solution. One said he would "wait out" the geriatric junta. Another, like many people in Yangon, hoped for an unlikely U.S. invasion.
"When American troops attacked Saddam Hussein in 2003, a lot of Burmese wished that American military planes would attack their country too," said another relatively well-off resident, the owner of a machine tool shop.
"This time, too, a lot of Burmese wish that the United States would launch a surgical strike at Naypyidaw," he said, referring to the isolated jungle capital the junta built in 2005, whose name means "abode of kings."
"This shows how desperate people are," said the shop owner, who said he himself would oppose such an attack. "They will welcome any change."
"Our country is turning into a crazy kingdom," said a young woman living in Yangon, a relative of a former government minister. "The generals think they are kings. I have relatives who are one-star or two-star generals. Even they don't like the senior generals."
Like an unpopular monarch, Than Shwe has become the subject of many unconfirmed rumors in Yangon. According to one such story, the senior general banned motorbikes in the city - where people who can afford the fare are packed into overcrowded buses - because he feared drive-by assassins.
The pervasive fear and hatred of the junta are evident to outsiders. "My driver once had a traffic accident with a general's car. It was clearly the general's driver's fault," said a foreign businessman in Yangon. "But my driver was so scared he pleaded to me to pay for the damage to the general's car and let him reimburse me from his salaries - even if it would cost years of his wages."
Decades of rule have left the military as Myanmar's only real elite. The Defense Services Academy, nestled in a remote alpine resort town called Pyin U Lwin, is the largest and best-funded institution of higher education in Myanmar, accepting thousands of cadets a year. With no strong alternative political force, the only viable chance for reform may come from young officers, said a foreign diplomat.
Indeed, in Yangon and other cities, there are signs of a new generation of affluent people enjoying contact with the outside world, and some people hope that young officers will share that outlook. These younger urbanites use Yahoo and Google e-mail accounts, despite the government's ban on access to those Web sites. They watch CNN and BBC on $40-a-month satellite TV service, despite the junta's frequent warnings to the population not to let foreign news "poison" their minds.
For the time being, however, the three veterans see little chance of a schism developing within the military.
Than Shwe, they said, buys his generals' allegiance but also breeds suspicion among them, sometimes playing generals from Defense Services Academy against those from the rival Office Training School when allocating posts.
Such factionalism was demonstrated in 2004, when Than Shwe and his cohorts ousted Prime Minister Khin Nyunt, then the regime's No. 3 figure, and disbanded entire military intelligence squads they suspected were loyal to him. (One consequence is that the regime is still rebuilding its secret police network, and people in Myanmar are actually less fearful of spies than they once were.)
But ultimately, the veterans and others say, the military is bound together by the fear of bloody retaliation should the regime be toppled.
"Than Shwe keeps not only the people but also the military in fear," one of the veterans said.
Showing posts with label Myanmar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Myanmar. Show all posts
IHT : Sober times for Myanmar's comics
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Sober times for Myanmar's comics
By Choe Sang-Hun | October 28, 2007
MANDALAY, Myanmar: Par Par Lay goes to India to seek relief for a toothache. The Indian dentist wonders why the Burmese man has come all that way to see him.
"Don't you have dentists in Myanmar?" he asks.
"Oh, yes, we do, doctor," says Par Par Lay. "But in Myanmar, we are not allowed to open our mouths."
That's a favorite joke of Par Par Lay, a third-generation practitioner of a-nyeint pwe, the traditional Burmese vaudeville featuring puppets, music and slapstick comedy tinged with in-your-face political satire - all performed in a country where cracking the wrong joke can land you in jail.
And Par Par Lay, the 60-year-old leader of the Mustache Brothers troupe, appears to be paying dearly for it.
About midnight on Sept. 25, his relatives say, the police raided Par Par Lay's home-cum-theater here and took him away. On the same day, at least one other popular comedian who, like Par Par Lay, had previously been imprisoned for his political jokes, a man named Zargana in Yangon, was arrested, according to Amnesty International and local residents.
The tightening of the ruling junta's gag on dissident voices came as the regime conducted a bloody crackdown on the first major pro-democracy uprising in this country in 19 years.
"I tried to find him, but I don't know where he is," said Par Par Lay's wife, Ma Win Ma, 56, a dancer. "If the past is an indication, he must have been beaten a lot. I am worried about whether he is alive or not."
The Mustache Brothers is a family troupe of 13 comedians, dancers and musicians. Par Par Lay and his brother Lu Maw, 58, wear handlebar mustaches, hence the group's name. They used to travel from village to village, performing at weddings, funerals and festivals.
In times past, Burmese kings would watch a-nyeint pwe to gauge public sentiment. But it seems the current junta never developed a taste for it.
In 1990, when the military government rejected the decisive victory of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy in the country's first election in 30 years and placed the pro-democracy leader under house arrest, Par Par Lay was thrown into jail for six months for his political humor.
In 1996, his troupe performed before an audience of 2,000 people, including foreign ambassadors, at the lakeside compound of Aung San Suu Kyi, by then a Nobel Peace laureate. In one skit, Par Par Lay demonstrated a "government dance," a comic rendition of a wily public servant stealing money from the poor.
A videotape of the event shows Aung San Suu Kyi laughing, clearly entertained. The generals were apparently less amused. Par Par Lay and his cousin Lu Zaw, also a comedian, were sentenced to seven years in a labor camp. He was released after five and a half years.
Afterwards, the government scratched the Mustache Brothers from the list of state-licensed artists Burmese were permitted to hire. Barred from performing for ordinary Burmese but determined to keep their tradition alive, and to make a living, the troupe reinvented itself, performing for foreigners who would come to the home they had turned into a makeshift theater.
Even with Par Par Lay gone, his family has kept the theater going on Mandalay's run-down a-nyeint street, which Lu Maw proudly likened to London's West End and Broadway in New York.
The street looked deserted, with foreign tourism having been sharply curtailed since the crackdown. Creaking taxis and pedicabs maneuvered around potholes and stray dogs on a sun-baked street. Lu Maw's family waited for tourists who never came.
"We are artists: we believe in ordinary people, not in the government," said Lu Maw in English. "We need light, but in Myanmar, light on and off. Not enough electricity. No water supply. School - money, money, money! Ordinary people no money.
"So we joke," he said. "People need a good joke. But the government don't like us because we joke."
The Mustache Brothers are an unlikely tourist attraction in a country where few people dare to criticize the government. But the government appears to tolerate the troupe's spoofs as long as they performed only in English.
Lu Maw, the only English speaker in the troupe, said he learned the language from tourists.
His rapid-fire English words seldom form a complete sentence. In performances, he supplements them with gestures and sign boards. One sign read "KGB," Lu Maw's allusion to the secret police in Myanmar.
"My favorite English is American and English slang," he said. "My brother in the clink, up the river, in big house."
His street-side theater could barely accommodate 10 red plastic chairs. Marionettes hung against a wall. On display was a picture of Aung San Suu Kyi visiting the Mustache Brothers in June 2002. Outside, Lu Maw's nephews kept an eye out for the police.
Lu Maw said he believed that Par Par Lay was arrested because he was a "good organizer" among the many a-nyeint comedians in Mandalay. He had strong opinions about the military generals who have mismanaged this resource-rich country into poverty, and joked about why Myanmar largely escaped the worst of the deadly 2004 tsunami:
A general died and became a big fish, the joke goes. As the tsunami was rolling toward Myanmar, the fish came to the surface and told the wave: "Stop! I have already done that here."
But Lu Maw said the recent killing of monks by soldiers was "no good for jokes."
"People are sad," he said. "Man kill man, you go to hell. This Buddhist belief. Now they are killing monks! They go beyond hell."
Lu Maw said that everyone in Myanmar was busy trying to keep up with rising prices, which is what drove people onto the streets to protest in August. He noted that Par Par Lay was sentenced in 1996 to "seven years for one joke" at Aung San Suu Kyi's place. Now, thanks to inflation, Lu Maw cracked, you make "two jokes and get 100 years in prison."
"We are dead meat already," he said.
International pressure has helped his family in the past, he said. When Par Par Lay was arrested in 1996, he said, British and Hollywood comedians wrote to the Myanmar government in protest.
"We need their help again," Lu Maw said. "Richard Gere's support is especially important because he is a Buddhist. We need a Rambo."
Despite Lu Maw's tireless optimism, his theater was permeated with sadness. In the past month, the family has struggled to make ends meet with a dearth of foreign tourists. Mustache Brothers T-shirts are collecting dust. Older members of the family were lying listlessly on a wooden bed on the mud-brick floor.
"If the government comes and takes his clothes and food, then I will know he is alive," said Ma Win Ma, Par Par Lay's wife. "That is enough. I believe one day he will come back and we can perform together again."
Lu Maw said that when Par Par Lay was in prison camp, he used to perform for other inmates before bed time.
"Maybe he is performing in prison somewhere," Lu Maw said. "Yes, we are afraid. But we keep on going. We just joke. This is our job, our family tradition."
By Choe Sang-Hun | October 28, 2007
MANDALAY, Myanmar: Par Par Lay goes to India to seek relief for a toothache. The Indian dentist wonders why the Burmese man has come all that way to see him.
"Don't you have dentists in Myanmar?" he asks.
"Oh, yes, we do, doctor," says Par Par Lay. "But in Myanmar, we are not allowed to open our mouths."
That's a favorite joke of Par Par Lay, a third-generation practitioner of a-nyeint pwe, the traditional Burmese vaudeville featuring puppets, music and slapstick comedy tinged with in-your-face political satire - all performed in a country where cracking the wrong joke can land you in jail.
And Par Par Lay, the 60-year-old leader of the Mustache Brothers troupe, appears to be paying dearly for it.
About midnight on Sept. 25, his relatives say, the police raided Par Par Lay's home-cum-theater here and took him away. On the same day, at least one other popular comedian who, like Par Par Lay, had previously been imprisoned for his political jokes, a man named Zargana in Yangon, was arrested, according to Amnesty International and local residents.
The tightening of the ruling junta's gag on dissident voices came as the regime conducted a bloody crackdown on the first major pro-democracy uprising in this country in 19 years.
"I tried to find him, but I don't know where he is," said Par Par Lay's wife, Ma Win Ma, 56, a dancer. "If the past is an indication, he must have been beaten a lot. I am worried about whether he is alive or not."
The Mustache Brothers is a family troupe of 13 comedians, dancers and musicians. Par Par Lay and his brother Lu Maw, 58, wear handlebar mustaches, hence the group's name. They used to travel from village to village, performing at weddings, funerals and festivals.
In times past, Burmese kings would watch a-nyeint pwe to gauge public sentiment. But it seems the current junta never developed a taste for it.
In 1990, when the military government rejected the decisive victory of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy in the country's first election in 30 years and placed the pro-democracy leader under house arrest, Par Par Lay was thrown into jail for six months for his political humor.
In 1996, his troupe performed before an audience of 2,000 people, including foreign ambassadors, at the lakeside compound of Aung San Suu Kyi, by then a Nobel Peace laureate. In one skit, Par Par Lay demonstrated a "government dance," a comic rendition of a wily public servant stealing money from the poor.
A videotape of the event shows Aung San Suu Kyi laughing, clearly entertained. The generals were apparently less amused. Par Par Lay and his cousin Lu Zaw, also a comedian, were sentenced to seven years in a labor camp. He was released after five and a half years.
Afterwards, the government scratched the Mustache Brothers from the list of state-licensed artists Burmese were permitted to hire. Barred from performing for ordinary Burmese but determined to keep their tradition alive, and to make a living, the troupe reinvented itself, performing for foreigners who would come to the home they had turned into a makeshift theater.
Even with Par Par Lay gone, his family has kept the theater going on Mandalay's run-down a-nyeint street, which Lu Maw proudly likened to London's West End and Broadway in New York.
The street looked deserted, with foreign tourism having been sharply curtailed since the crackdown. Creaking taxis and pedicabs maneuvered around potholes and stray dogs on a sun-baked street. Lu Maw's family waited for tourists who never came.
"We are artists: we believe in ordinary people, not in the government," said Lu Maw in English. "We need light, but in Myanmar, light on and off. Not enough electricity. No water supply. School - money, money, money! Ordinary people no money.
"So we joke," he said. "People need a good joke. But the government don't like us because we joke."
The Mustache Brothers are an unlikely tourist attraction in a country where few people dare to criticize the government. But the government appears to tolerate the troupe's spoofs as long as they performed only in English.
Lu Maw, the only English speaker in the troupe, said he learned the language from tourists.
His rapid-fire English words seldom form a complete sentence. In performances, he supplements them with gestures and sign boards. One sign read "KGB," Lu Maw's allusion to the secret police in Myanmar.
"My favorite English is American and English slang," he said. "My brother in the clink, up the river, in big house."
His street-side theater could barely accommodate 10 red plastic chairs. Marionettes hung against a wall. On display was a picture of Aung San Suu Kyi visiting the Mustache Brothers in June 2002. Outside, Lu Maw's nephews kept an eye out for the police.
Lu Maw said he believed that Par Par Lay was arrested because he was a "good organizer" among the many a-nyeint comedians in Mandalay. He had strong opinions about the military generals who have mismanaged this resource-rich country into poverty, and joked about why Myanmar largely escaped the worst of the deadly 2004 tsunami:
A general died and became a big fish, the joke goes. As the tsunami was rolling toward Myanmar, the fish came to the surface and told the wave: "Stop! I have already done that here."
But Lu Maw said the recent killing of monks by soldiers was "no good for jokes."
"People are sad," he said. "Man kill man, you go to hell. This Buddhist belief. Now they are killing monks! They go beyond hell."
Lu Maw said that everyone in Myanmar was busy trying to keep up with rising prices, which is what drove people onto the streets to protest in August. He noted that Par Par Lay was sentenced in 1996 to "seven years for one joke" at Aung San Suu Kyi's place. Now, thanks to inflation, Lu Maw cracked, you make "two jokes and get 100 years in prison."
"We are dead meat already," he said.
International pressure has helped his family in the past, he said. When Par Par Lay was arrested in 1996, he said, British and Hollywood comedians wrote to the Myanmar government in protest.
"We need their help again," Lu Maw said. "Richard Gere's support is especially important because he is a Buddhist. We need a Rambo."
Despite Lu Maw's tireless optimism, his theater was permeated with sadness. In the past month, the family has struggled to make ends meet with a dearth of foreign tourists. Mustache Brothers T-shirts are collecting dust. Older members of the family were lying listlessly on a wooden bed on the mud-brick floor.
"If the government comes and takes his clothes and food, then I will know he is alive," said Ma Win Ma, Par Par Lay's wife. "That is enough. I believe one day he will come back and we can perform together again."
Lu Maw said that when Par Par Lay was in prison camp, he used to perform for other inmates before bed time.
"Maybe he is performing in prison somewhere," Lu Maw said. "Yes, we are afraid. But we keep on going. We just joke. This is our job, our family tradition."
Filed under
extraordinary rendition,
Myanmar
by Winter Patriot
on Sunday, October 28, 2007
[
link |
| home
]
| home
]
IHT : Shaken traditions: The crushing of Myanmar's monks
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Shaken traditions: The crushing of Myanmar's monks
By Choe Sang-Hun | October 23, 2007
MANDALAY, Myanmar: As the lunchtime gong chimed through a tree-shaded monastery, several hundred monks in burgundy robes lined up on a mid-October day, all holding alms bowls.
It is a common scene in Myanmar, where one out of every 100 people, many of them still children, are monks. But the lunch line at the Mahagandhayon Monastery here, the country's largest, used to be much longer.
"We usually have 1,400 monks here," said a senior monk. "Because of the situation, parents took 1,000 of them home."
For decades, two powerful institutions have shaped Burmese life: the 500,000-member Buddhist clergy, which commands a moral authority over the population, and Senior General Than Shwe's junta, whose 450,000-strong military keeps the population in check with intimidation.
Their uneasy coexistence has shattered. After scattered demonstrations erupted against sharp increases in fuel prices in August, thousands of monks took to the streets to protest the junta's economic mismanagement and political repression. The military responded with batons and bullets.
The guns have prevailed over mantras, at least for now.
As of Oct. 6, the government said it had detained 533 monks, of whom 398 were released after sorting out what it called "real monks" from "bogus ones." Monks and dissidents contend that many more were detained.
"They took away truckloads of monks and lay people," said the deputy head of a monastery in Yangon, the country's largest city. "They had the monks kneel down, with their hands on the back of their heads. Anyone who raised his head was beaten."
He said that at Ngwe Kyayan, the largest monastery in Yangon, soldiers took food and donation boxes, and even beat the abbot and vandalized images of Buddha, as some of its 300 monks fought back.
The monks, he said, began demonstrating to protest the economic deprivation of ordinary Burmese. "It's a terrible situation," he said. "Monks took to the streets to draw attention to this problem, pleading for loving kindness. But our government is worse than Hitler's Nazis. They have no respect for religion. I wonder how long it will take to heal this wound."
When it was over, The New Light of Myanmar, a government-run English-language newspaper, said, "monks had been defrocked during interrogation," so that they could be questioned as lay people, then "ordained and send back to their monasteries." In interviews, monks denounced the process, saying the military had no authority to defrock or ordain monks.
The junta also employed divide-and-rule tactics, by persuading the state-sanctioned Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee, which oversees the Buddhist clergy here, to accept its donations and to order monks to stop protesting or face punishment.
"Some of these senior monks are bribed by the regime," said an editor at a Yangon magazine. "They have accepted so many good things in life — cars, televisions, big houses, telephones and mobile phones — that they simply have to listen to the regime."
At the Mahagandhayon Monastery here, soldiers had pulled back after cordoning off this temple for weeks. But their trucks continued to lurk in back alleys near the compound, as rumors circulated that, if the monks rose up again, it would probably be in this city, the nation's second largest. About 20,000 of its million residents are monks, one of the highest concentrations in the country.
Young men from across the country come here to train as monks, and they have grown increasingly passionate about the poverty and injustice their nation has suffered under the military government.
The fear was still palpable at Mahagandhayon, where monks chanted mantras over their last meal of the day, a late-morning lunch of vegetable soup, eggplants, rice and a special treat from a donor — instant noodles. But the monks were clearly still reluctant to discuss the military's crushing of the demonstrations less than a month ago.
"They are afraid of guns!" said a senior monk said before vanishing into the dining hall.
Long before the protests erupted, monks were keenly aware of people's suffering. When they went out to receive alms, said the senior monk in Yangon, they saw "no happiness in people's faces, people whose minds are preoccupied with finding food and surviving one day at a time."
But the military's use of force against the monks has unsettled fundamental Burmese values.
"To Burmese, monks are like sons of the Buddha," said Maung Aye, a taxi driver, as he drove around Yangon's 2,000-year-old Sule Pagoda, which is said to enshrine a hair of the Buddha and was a focal point of the protests and their suppression last month.
One man, a 37-year-old shop owner in Yangon, said his 5-year-old son, who like most Burmese children has been raised with Buddhist beliefs in karma, had cried out: "I don't want to become a soldier. If I have to kill a monk, the worst thing will happen to me in my next life."
At a Yangon temple, sitting before a golden Buddha figure encircled by blinking electric lights, two middle-aged monks spoke with resignation and anger.
"We learned a lesson from 1988," one monk said, referring to the large-scale pro-democracy uprising that the military put down, leaving hundreds, perhaps thousands, dead. "If it changes nothing and only gets worse, why risk our lives? Why try, if nothing happens?"
The other monk said: "We would like to love our government. We tried but couldn't. We want to like to go out and demonstrate again, but we know they are out there with their guns."
The Buddhist Lent, which lasts three months into late October, is a time when monks focus on studying scriptures and refrain from leaving their monasteries, except for early-morning outings to collect alms. The fact that monks ventured out in protest during this period was widely seen here as a sign of just how angry they were. But by mid-October, many monasteries in Yangon were deserted, after raids by the military drove thousands of monks to flee.
In towns across Myanmar, dawn has traditionally seen the ritual of monks filing down streets seeking alms and laypeople gaining merit by donating rice and other food. Families take pride in what is often seen as adopting monks, providing them with food, clothing, books and other goods for a few months or years, depending on their finances.
As poverty has worsened in Myanmar, however, the alms processions have increasingly turned into a sad exchange of apologies for having to beg and for being unable to give. Now, with the monks scattered, the alms lines have dwindled in big cities like Yangon and Mandalay.
For centuries, whoever seized power in this country sought legitimacy by lavishing money on pagodas and monasteries. When the democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi called for a "second struggle for national independence" in 1988, she chose Yangon's gold-spired Shwedagon Pagoda as the site to deliver her watershed speech.
Thus when monks marched in September to the home where she is kept under house arrest, the act was a moral reproof to the government.
But the monks themselves are not immune to criticism. Although senior clerics are elected by monks and revered by lay people, "they form a small closed society which doesn't know anything about the community at large," the magazine editor said. "Some of them do not know how poor people live in a small village."
One of the many titles the government bestows on the senior monks is Bhaddanta. Some lay people call these privileged monks "Bhaddanta Toyota" or "Bhaddanta Toshiba."
Other lay people defended the aging clerics who have taken gifts from the government. These monks, they said, are under moral obligation to accept donations, and fear that confrontation could cost more lives.
Still, witnesses reported piles of rice donated by the government left uncollected at the gates of some monasteries, a rebuff of the government's effort to placate the clergy.
At Mahagandhayon in Mandalay, the monks were going about their daily routine. Droning sounds of scriptures being recited filled the monastery. Stray dogs, which came to share leftover alms with child beggars, dozed on the ground.
The senior monk said he hoped that the rest of the students would return in a month or so. One young monk who had remained said, "Please go out and tell the world exactly what really has happened in this country."
He added, "I am scared just talking to you about this."
By Choe Sang-Hun | October 23, 2007
MANDALAY, Myanmar: As the lunchtime gong chimed through a tree-shaded monastery, several hundred monks in burgundy robes lined up on a mid-October day, all holding alms bowls.
It is a common scene in Myanmar, where one out of every 100 people, many of them still children, are monks. But the lunch line at the Mahagandhayon Monastery here, the country's largest, used to be much longer.
"We usually have 1,400 monks here," said a senior monk. "Because of the situation, parents took 1,000 of them home."
For decades, two powerful institutions have shaped Burmese life: the 500,000-member Buddhist clergy, which commands a moral authority over the population, and Senior General Than Shwe's junta, whose 450,000-strong military keeps the population in check with intimidation.
Their uneasy coexistence has shattered. After scattered demonstrations erupted against sharp increases in fuel prices in August, thousands of monks took to the streets to protest the junta's economic mismanagement and political repression. The military responded with batons and bullets.
The guns have prevailed over mantras, at least for now.
As of Oct. 6, the government said it had detained 533 monks, of whom 398 were released after sorting out what it called "real monks" from "bogus ones." Monks and dissidents contend that many more were detained.
"They took away truckloads of monks and lay people," said the deputy head of a monastery in Yangon, the country's largest city. "They had the monks kneel down, with their hands on the back of their heads. Anyone who raised his head was beaten."
He said that at Ngwe Kyayan, the largest monastery in Yangon, soldiers took food and donation boxes, and even beat the abbot and vandalized images of Buddha, as some of its 300 monks fought back.
The monks, he said, began demonstrating to protest the economic deprivation of ordinary Burmese. "It's a terrible situation," he said. "Monks took to the streets to draw attention to this problem, pleading for loving kindness. But our government is worse than Hitler's Nazis. They have no respect for religion. I wonder how long it will take to heal this wound."
When it was over, The New Light of Myanmar, a government-run English-language newspaper, said, "monks had been defrocked during interrogation," so that they could be questioned as lay people, then "ordained and send back to their monasteries." In interviews, monks denounced the process, saying the military had no authority to defrock or ordain monks.
The junta also employed divide-and-rule tactics, by persuading the state-sanctioned Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee, which oversees the Buddhist clergy here, to accept its donations and to order monks to stop protesting or face punishment.
"Some of these senior monks are bribed by the regime," said an editor at a Yangon magazine. "They have accepted so many good things in life — cars, televisions, big houses, telephones and mobile phones — that they simply have to listen to the regime."
At the Mahagandhayon Monastery here, soldiers had pulled back after cordoning off this temple for weeks. But their trucks continued to lurk in back alleys near the compound, as rumors circulated that, if the monks rose up again, it would probably be in this city, the nation's second largest. About 20,000 of its million residents are monks, one of the highest concentrations in the country.
Young men from across the country come here to train as monks, and they have grown increasingly passionate about the poverty and injustice their nation has suffered under the military government.
The fear was still palpable at Mahagandhayon, where monks chanted mantras over their last meal of the day, a late-morning lunch of vegetable soup, eggplants, rice and a special treat from a donor — instant noodles. But the monks were clearly still reluctant to discuss the military's crushing of the demonstrations less than a month ago.
"They are afraid of guns!" said a senior monk said before vanishing into the dining hall.
Long before the protests erupted, monks were keenly aware of people's suffering. When they went out to receive alms, said the senior monk in Yangon, they saw "no happiness in people's faces, people whose minds are preoccupied with finding food and surviving one day at a time."
But the military's use of force against the monks has unsettled fundamental Burmese values.
"To Burmese, monks are like sons of the Buddha," said Maung Aye, a taxi driver, as he drove around Yangon's 2,000-year-old Sule Pagoda, which is said to enshrine a hair of the Buddha and was a focal point of the protests and their suppression last month.
One man, a 37-year-old shop owner in Yangon, said his 5-year-old son, who like most Burmese children has been raised with Buddhist beliefs in karma, had cried out: "I don't want to become a soldier. If I have to kill a monk, the worst thing will happen to me in my next life."
At a Yangon temple, sitting before a golden Buddha figure encircled by blinking electric lights, two middle-aged monks spoke with resignation and anger.
"We learned a lesson from 1988," one monk said, referring to the large-scale pro-democracy uprising that the military put down, leaving hundreds, perhaps thousands, dead. "If it changes nothing and only gets worse, why risk our lives? Why try, if nothing happens?"
The other monk said: "We would like to love our government. We tried but couldn't. We want to like to go out and demonstrate again, but we know they are out there with their guns."
The Buddhist Lent, which lasts three months into late October, is a time when monks focus on studying scriptures and refrain from leaving their monasteries, except for early-morning outings to collect alms. The fact that monks ventured out in protest during this period was widely seen here as a sign of just how angry they were. But by mid-October, many monasteries in Yangon were deserted, after raids by the military drove thousands of monks to flee.
In towns across Myanmar, dawn has traditionally seen the ritual of monks filing down streets seeking alms and laypeople gaining merit by donating rice and other food. Families take pride in what is often seen as adopting monks, providing them with food, clothing, books and other goods for a few months or years, depending on their finances.
As poverty has worsened in Myanmar, however, the alms processions have increasingly turned into a sad exchange of apologies for having to beg and for being unable to give. Now, with the monks scattered, the alms lines have dwindled in big cities like Yangon and Mandalay.
For centuries, whoever seized power in this country sought legitimacy by lavishing money on pagodas and monasteries. When the democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi called for a "second struggle for national independence" in 1988, she chose Yangon's gold-spired Shwedagon Pagoda as the site to deliver her watershed speech.
Thus when monks marched in September to the home where she is kept under house arrest, the act was a moral reproof to the government.
But the monks themselves are not immune to criticism. Although senior clerics are elected by monks and revered by lay people, "they form a small closed society which doesn't know anything about the community at large," the magazine editor said. "Some of them do not know how poor people live in a small village."
One of the many titles the government bestows on the senior monks is Bhaddanta. Some lay people call these privileged monks "Bhaddanta Toyota" or "Bhaddanta Toshiba."
Other lay people defended the aging clerics who have taken gifts from the government. These monks, they said, are under moral obligation to accept donations, and fear that confrontation could cost more lives.
Still, witnesses reported piles of rice donated by the government left uncollected at the gates of some monasteries, a rebuff of the government's effort to placate the clergy.
At Mahagandhayon in Mandalay, the monks were going about their daily routine. Droning sounds of scriptures being recited filled the monastery. Stray dogs, which came to share leftover alms with child beggars, dozed on the ground.
The senior monk said he hoped that the rest of the students would return in a month or so. One young monk who had remained said, "Please go out and tell the world exactly what really has happened in this country."
He added, "I am scared just talking to you about this."
CNN : Myanmar, where 'traitors soon meet their tragic ends'
Friday, October 19, 2007
Myanmar, where 'traitors soon meet their tragic ends'
* I-Reporter: Military crackdown has been "unbelievably severe"
* Author says climate of fear is beyond description
* "Every day, I hear sad stories of real abuse"
October 19, 2007
CNN editor's note: An I-Reporter inside Myanmar shares experiences of what it's like to live there. Because of safety concerns, CNN.com has agreed not to identify the author. The views expressed here are those of the author alone.
YANGON, Myanmar -- On the surface, Yangon appears almost normal since most of the military's activities now take place under cover of a nighttime curfew away from the cameras. But what is normal -- and what happens beyond normal?
An I-Reporter took this photo late last month. The boldest protesters shouted at soldiers about three blocks away.
The military crackdown has been unbelievably severe, especially considering this country's deep reverence for Buddhist monks. To see monks attacked during peaceful demonstrations is disturbing, as is the vengeance with which the military attempts to cover up its abuse and prevent news from leaking to the outside world.
But the abuse goes beyond that.
Every day, I hear sad stories. A father is killed when trying to reach his son in a school that is cordoned off by the military. A young student in a village school is killed by overzealous military, but the family cannot obtain the body, which was conveniently cremated. If the family protests, the whole village suffers.
For several days, word of what was happening here in Myanmar did get out. News organizations like CNN showed the world video of the people being beaten during the brutal government crackdown.
Now, I and others observe people arrested on the street and led into an alleyway or building where there are no cameras. What happens then is anyone's guess.
I catch glimpses of life from conversations with friends and co-workers describing a pattern of corruption and repression.
Electricity cuts mean that you have to get up at 3 a.m. to do your ironing when the power might be on. Or you cannot store food in your refrigerator -- if you can even afford one. You cannot travel freely without permits. Buy a car? Only if you pay an exorbitant amount through the military-controlled sales.
Health care for the average person? It's practically nonexistent. Start a small business? Beware that a successful small restaurant can be taken away from you under the guise of an illegal permit and then taken over by someone who is connected.
These are personal inconveniences of life in Yangon. The other "inconveniences" are more threatening.
When a co-worker shows up late in the morning, we discover that the whole family was woken up at 1 a.m. and had to stand outside the house while the authorities searched for anyone living there without a permit.
People are very reserved in Yangon. A level of fear filters through every conversation.
Informants are insidious and keep a close watch on the local people. After living in Yangon for awhile, even someone new to the country can recognize the casual look from the guy on the corner with his cell phone to his ear -- just concerned about your protection, no doubt.
Seeing the routine repression in this country can only make you wonder what happens out of sight and outside normal conversation, especially during this elevated crisis.
advertisement
I know this government is very vindictive and obviously has no intention of doing anything but a better job at covering up its abuses.
A recent quote in the The New Light of Myanmar, a government publication, says it all: "National traitors will soon meet their tragic ends."
* I-Reporter: Military crackdown has been "unbelievably severe"
* Author says climate of fear is beyond description
* "Every day, I hear sad stories of real abuse"
October 19, 2007
CNN editor's note: An I-Reporter inside Myanmar shares experiences of what it's like to live there. Because of safety concerns, CNN.com has agreed not to identify the author. The views expressed here are those of the author alone.
YANGON, Myanmar -- On the surface, Yangon appears almost normal since most of the military's activities now take place under cover of a nighttime curfew away from the cameras. But what is normal -- and what happens beyond normal?
An I-Reporter took this photo late last month. The boldest protesters shouted at soldiers about three blocks away.
The military crackdown has been unbelievably severe, especially considering this country's deep reverence for Buddhist monks. To see monks attacked during peaceful demonstrations is disturbing, as is the vengeance with which the military attempts to cover up its abuse and prevent news from leaking to the outside world.
But the abuse goes beyond that.
Every day, I hear sad stories. A father is killed when trying to reach his son in a school that is cordoned off by the military. A young student in a village school is killed by overzealous military, but the family cannot obtain the body, which was conveniently cremated. If the family protests, the whole village suffers.
For several days, word of what was happening here in Myanmar did get out. News organizations like CNN showed the world video of the people being beaten during the brutal government crackdown.
Now, I and others observe people arrested on the street and led into an alleyway or building where there are no cameras. What happens then is anyone's guess.
I catch glimpses of life from conversations with friends and co-workers describing a pattern of corruption and repression.
Electricity cuts mean that you have to get up at 3 a.m. to do your ironing when the power might be on. Or you cannot store food in your refrigerator -- if you can even afford one. You cannot travel freely without permits. Buy a car? Only if you pay an exorbitant amount through the military-controlled sales.
Health care for the average person? It's practically nonexistent. Start a small business? Beware that a successful small restaurant can be taken away from you under the guise of an illegal permit and then taken over by someone who is connected.
These are personal inconveniences of life in Yangon. The other "inconveniences" are more threatening.
When a co-worker shows up late in the morning, we discover that the whole family was woken up at 1 a.m. and had to stand outside the house while the authorities searched for anyone living there without a permit.
People are very reserved in Yangon. A level of fear filters through every conversation.
Informants are insidious and keep a close watch on the local people. After living in Yangon for awhile, even someone new to the country can recognize the casual look from the guy on the corner with his cell phone to his ear -- just concerned about your protection, no doubt.
Seeing the routine repression in this country can only make you wonder what happens out of sight and outside normal conversation, especially during this elevated crisis.
advertisement
I know this government is very vindictive and obviously has no intention of doing anything but a better job at covering up its abuses.
A recent quote in the The New Light of Myanmar, a government publication, says it all: "National traitors will soon meet their tragic ends."
Reuters : Myanmar opposition leader tortured to death: group
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Myanmar opposition leader tortured to death: group
October 10, 2007
BANGKOK (Reuters) - A Myanmar opposition leader who was arrested during last month's mass protests against the junta died due to torture during interrogation, an activist group said on Wednesday.
In Washington, the United States threatened new sanctions against Myanmar after media reports of the death of Win Shwe.
"The junta must stop the brutal treatment of its people and peacefully transition to democracy or face new sanctions from the United States," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in a statement.
The White House did not say what additional sanctions it was considering on the former Burma, but it called for a full investigation into Win Shwe's death.
The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) said that Win Shwe, a 42-year-old member of the National League for Democracy, and four other people were arrested on September 26 because of their active support for and participation in the biggest pro-democracy protests in nearly 20 years.
"He died as a result of torture during interrogation," the Thai-based group said in a statement on its Web site (www.aappb.org), sourcing its information to authorities in Kyaukpandawn township.
"However, his body was not sent to his family and the interrogators indicated that they had cremated it instead."
Official media in Myanmar said 10 people were killed when the junta sent in soldiers to end days of Buddhist monk-led demonstrations in September, although Western governments say the toll is likely to have been much higher.
The AAPP said in its statement that "many dead bodies and injured persons were cremated or placed in the river".
"Some dead bodies of monks have appeared in the Pazundaung River in Rangoon (Yangon) in the past few days. In addition, many of those who have been arrested have been tortured during interrogation."
U.S. First Lady Laura Bush told USA Today in an interview published on Wednesday that the United States would announce further sanctions on Myanmar's military government "within the next couple of days" if the junta does not take steps toward democracy.
© Reuters 2007 All rights reserved
October 10, 2007
BANGKOK (Reuters) - A Myanmar opposition leader who was arrested during last month's mass protests against the junta died due to torture during interrogation, an activist group said on Wednesday.
In Washington, the United States threatened new sanctions against Myanmar after media reports of the death of Win Shwe.
"The junta must stop the brutal treatment of its people and peacefully transition to democracy or face new sanctions from the United States," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in a statement.
The White House did not say what additional sanctions it was considering on the former Burma, but it called for a full investigation into Win Shwe's death.
The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) said that Win Shwe, a 42-year-old member of the National League for Democracy, and four other people were arrested on September 26 because of their active support for and participation in the biggest pro-democracy protests in nearly 20 years.
"He died as a result of torture during interrogation," the Thai-based group said in a statement on its Web site (www.aappb.org), sourcing its information to authorities in Kyaukpandawn township.
"However, his body was not sent to his family and the interrogators indicated that they had cremated it instead."
Official media in Myanmar said 10 people were killed when the junta sent in soldiers to end days of Buddhist monk-led demonstrations in September, although Western governments say the toll is likely to have been much higher.
The AAPP said in its statement that "many dead bodies and injured persons were cremated or placed in the river".
"Some dead bodies of monks have appeared in the Pazundaung River in Rangoon (Yangon) in the past few days. In addition, many of those who have been arrested have been tortured during interrogation."
U.S. First Lady Laura Bush told USA Today in an interview published on Wednesday that the United States would announce further sanctions on Myanmar's military government "within the next couple of days" if the junta does not take steps toward democracy.
© Reuters 2007 All rights reserved
NYT : Myanmar Junta Admits Mass Arrests
Friday, October 05, 2007
Myanmar Junta Admits Mass Arrests
By THOMAS FULLER | October 5, 2007
BANGKOK, Oct. 4 — For the first time, Myanmar’s military rulers late Thursday acknowledged mass detentions in their brutal crackdown on protesters, saying that about 1,400 people were being held. They also made a heavily qualified offer to meet with the pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
The junta offered to hold talks with Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, but only if she abandoned her attitude of “confrontation” and repealed her call for foreign sanctions against the country. The announcement was made on the nightly radio and television newscasts, which are monitored by news agencies.
State news media said that during a meeting in Myanmar this week, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, the leader of the junta, told Ibrahim Gambari, the United Nations envoy, that Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi “has called for confrontation, utter devastation, economic sanctions and all other sanctions.”
If she “announces publicly she has given up these four things, he would hold direct talks” with her, General Than Shwe told Mr. Gambari, according to Myanmar media.
[Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the National League of Democracy, dismissed the offer as unreasonable, Reuters reported on Friday.]
Dissident groups from Myanmar, formerly Burma, were scathing in their appraisal of the proposal.
“This is meaningless; this is just for show,” said Aung Din, the policy director of the United States Campaign for Burma, a group based in Washington that is working to bring democracy to the country. “There are economic sanctions against Burma not because of Aung San Suu Kyi, but because of the military rulers. He has to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi without any conditions.”
State media also announced Thursday that 2,093 people had been arrested in the crackdown and that 692 had been released. This is the first time the secretive junta has released any numbers on its arrests during the crackdown.
One of those released on Thursday is an employee of the United Nations in Myanmar, Myint Ngwe Mon, who was taken from her home with her husband, her brother-in-law and her driver on Wednesday. Their release was confirmed by Charles Petrie, the most senior official for the United Nations in the country, but no further details were available about the reasons for her detention and release.
David Mathieson, an expert on Myanmar with the international rights group Human Rights Watch, said the junta’s numbers on its arrests “seem very plausible.” He added, “That’s certainly very similar to what we’ve been hearing.”
Mr. Mathieson said he believed that the junta’s new public statements were a result of pressure from neighboring countries, including China and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
“I think it’s a reflection of pressure coming from the outside,” he said.
Pressure has also been applied by the United Nations. During his meeting with the leader of the junta, Mr. Gambari, the United Nations envoy, asked that the government offer more information on the detentions, said Mr. Petrie, who was present in the meeting.
The junta has announced that 10 people were killed in the crackdown, a number that diplomats in Yangon, the country’s main city, and other analysts believe may be an underestimate.
Public pressure has come from the United States, which last week expanded its visa ban on Myanmar’s military leaders and their families, and from the European Union, which on Wednesday agreed in principle to toughen sanctions against Myanmar.
The public reaction from China, which is thought to have the most sway over Myanmar’s generals, has been more restrained. A statement by the spokesman of China’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday praised the “mediation” by the United Nations.
Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi and General Than Shwe have met only a few times since elections in 1990, when Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won a landslide victory that was ignored by the generals.
By THOMAS FULLER | October 5, 2007
BANGKOK, Oct. 4 — For the first time, Myanmar’s military rulers late Thursday acknowledged mass detentions in their brutal crackdown on protesters, saying that about 1,400 people were being held. They also made a heavily qualified offer to meet with the pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
The junta offered to hold talks with Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, but only if she abandoned her attitude of “confrontation” and repealed her call for foreign sanctions against the country. The announcement was made on the nightly radio and television newscasts, which are monitored by news agencies.
State news media said that during a meeting in Myanmar this week, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, the leader of the junta, told Ibrahim Gambari, the United Nations envoy, that Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi “has called for confrontation, utter devastation, economic sanctions and all other sanctions.”
If she “announces publicly she has given up these four things, he would hold direct talks” with her, General Than Shwe told Mr. Gambari, according to Myanmar media.
[Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the National League of Democracy, dismissed the offer as unreasonable, Reuters reported on Friday.]
Dissident groups from Myanmar, formerly Burma, were scathing in their appraisal of the proposal.
“This is meaningless; this is just for show,” said Aung Din, the policy director of the United States Campaign for Burma, a group based in Washington that is working to bring democracy to the country. “There are economic sanctions against Burma not because of Aung San Suu Kyi, but because of the military rulers. He has to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi without any conditions.”
State media also announced Thursday that 2,093 people had been arrested in the crackdown and that 692 had been released. This is the first time the secretive junta has released any numbers on its arrests during the crackdown.
One of those released on Thursday is an employee of the United Nations in Myanmar, Myint Ngwe Mon, who was taken from her home with her husband, her brother-in-law and her driver on Wednesday. Their release was confirmed by Charles Petrie, the most senior official for the United Nations in the country, but no further details were available about the reasons for her detention and release.
David Mathieson, an expert on Myanmar with the international rights group Human Rights Watch, said the junta’s numbers on its arrests “seem very plausible.” He added, “That’s certainly very similar to what we’ve been hearing.”
Mr. Mathieson said he believed that the junta’s new public statements were a result of pressure from neighboring countries, including China and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
“I think it’s a reflection of pressure coming from the outside,” he said.
Pressure has also been applied by the United Nations. During his meeting with the leader of the junta, Mr. Gambari, the United Nations envoy, asked that the government offer more information on the detentions, said Mr. Petrie, who was present in the meeting.
The junta has announced that 10 people were killed in the crackdown, a number that diplomats in Yangon, the country’s main city, and other analysts believe may be an underestimate.
Public pressure has come from the United States, which last week expanded its visa ban on Myanmar’s military leaders and their families, and from the European Union, which on Wednesday agreed in principle to toughen sanctions against Myanmar.
The public reaction from China, which is thought to have the most sway over Myanmar’s generals, has been more restrained. A statement by the spokesman of China’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday praised the “mediation” by the United Nations.
Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi and General Than Shwe have met only a few times since elections in 1990, when Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won a landslide victory that was ignored by the generals.
BBC : Burmese struggle goes underground
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Burmese struggle goes underground
By Andrew Harding | BBC News, Bangkok | October 3, 2007
On the telephone from Rangoon, the businessman sounded desperate.
"I have looked everywhere," he said.
"The soldiers took my daughter off the street last week. I don't know if she is injured or what has happened to her. She is 18."
As Burma's military authorities continue to hunt down and arrest those suspected of involvement in last week's massive street protests, the fate of an unknown number of detained monks and civilians remains unclear.
"I have heard that 6,000 people may be missing - that sounds plausible," said one Western diplomat, on condition of anonymity.
A local United Nations official said his office was still looking for several staff members and their families.
The businessman hunting for his daughter had already visited two places widely thought to have been turned into makeshift detention centres - a sports complex at Rangoon's old race course, and a technical institute in the north of the city.
"The soldiers outside the institute told me it was empty," said the businessman, "but a friend in the neighbourhood told me two buildings were being used - one for female prisoners, and the other mainly for monks. I am at a loss as to what to do now."
"It's frightening to even think about the fate of those monks," said Shari Villarosa, the senior US diplomat in Rangoon.
She said conditions in Burmese prisons were "very grim, with reports of torture".
"The message has to get to the generals that this is not how a legitimate government acts in the 21st Century," she added.
'Sleep deprivation'
But the Burmese authorities have shown no signs of responding to international pressure.
Military vehicles patrol Rangoon's streets before dawn, with loudspeakers announcing: "We have photographs. We are going to make arrests."
A former Burmese political prisoner, who spent a decade in jail for criticising the regime, said it was safe to assume from his own experiences that many of those detained would be tortured.
"The monks will have a very hard time," he said.
"I was blindfolded and subjected to sleep deprivation. They interrogated me in shifts for 11 days."
The man, who lives in Rangoon, wanted to remain anonymous for his own safety but urged the outside world to put pressure on the authorities by publicising the names of those arrested.
"That has to happen now. Not next week or next month."
Military plea
Although the Burmese military has forced the protesters off Rangoon's streets, this does not appear to have broken the resolve of democracy campaigners.
Nilar Thein has been in hiding since the very first street protests, triggered by abrupt fuel price rises, were broken up by police and hired government thugs last month.
Although her husband and many other leading activists from the "88 Generation" (named after the last student uprising of 1988) are now in prison, Nilar Thein is still on the run with a handful of other activists.
Reached by telephone, she broke away from a planning meeting to declare: "There will be more sacrifices ahead. We must find a way to win this battle by joining hands with the monks and the public."
She urged members of the Burmese armed forces to stop fighting for "generals with blood on their hands".
Nilar, 35, left her five-month-old daughter with her mother-in-law when she went into hiding. Police are now guarding the house.
Asked when she thought she would see her child again, Nilar replied: "I hope when we are finally victorious that all our families will be reunited.
"I can't predict how long that will take."
By Andrew Harding | BBC News, Bangkok | October 3, 2007
On the telephone from Rangoon, the businessman sounded desperate.
"I have looked everywhere," he said.
"The soldiers took my daughter off the street last week. I don't know if she is injured or what has happened to her. She is 18."
As Burma's military authorities continue to hunt down and arrest those suspected of involvement in last week's massive street protests, the fate of an unknown number of detained monks and civilians remains unclear.
"I have heard that 6,000 people may be missing - that sounds plausible," said one Western diplomat, on condition of anonymity.
A local United Nations official said his office was still looking for several staff members and their families.
The businessman hunting for his daughter had already visited two places widely thought to have been turned into makeshift detention centres - a sports complex at Rangoon's old race course, and a technical institute in the north of the city.
"The soldiers outside the institute told me it was empty," said the businessman, "but a friend in the neighbourhood told me two buildings were being used - one for female prisoners, and the other mainly for monks. I am at a loss as to what to do now."
"It's frightening to even think about the fate of those monks," said Shari Villarosa, the senior US diplomat in Rangoon.
She said conditions in Burmese prisons were "very grim, with reports of torture".
"The message has to get to the generals that this is not how a legitimate government acts in the 21st Century," she added.
'Sleep deprivation'
But the Burmese authorities have shown no signs of responding to international pressure.
Military vehicles patrol Rangoon's streets before dawn, with loudspeakers announcing: "We have photographs. We are going to make arrests."
A former Burmese political prisoner, who spent a decade in jail for criticising the regime, said it was safe to assume from his own experiences that many of those detained would be tortured.
"The monks will have a very hard time," he said.
"I was blindfolded and subjected to sleep deprivation. They interrogated me in shifts for 11 days."
The man, who lives in Rangoon, wanted to remain anonymous for his own safety but urged the outside world to put pressure on the authorities by publicising the names of those arrested.
"That has to happen now. Not next week or next month."
Military plea
Although the Burmese military has forced the protesters off Rangoon's streets, this does not appear to have broken the resolve of democracy campaigners.
Nilar Thein has been in hiding since the very first street protests, triggered by abrupt fuel price rises, were broken up by police and hired government thugs last month.
Although her husband and many other leading activists from the "88 Generation" (named after the last student uprising of 1988) are now in prison, Nilar Thein is still on the run with a handful of other activists.
Reached by telephone, she broke away from a planning meeting to declare: "There will be more sacrifices ahead. We must find a way to win this battle by joining hands with the monks and the public."
She urged members of the Burmese armed forces to stop fighting for "generals with blood on their hands".
Nilar, 35, left her five-month-old daughter with her mother-in-law when she went into hiding. Police are now guarding the house.
Asked when she thought she would see her child again, Nilar replied: "I hope when we are finally victorious that all our families will be reunited.
"I can't predict how long that will take."
BBC : More arrests in Burma crackdown
Thursday, October 04, 2007
More arrests in Burma crackdown
BBC News | October 4, 2007
Scores of Burmese have been arrested overnight, as the country's military continues its crackdown following last week's protests, witnesses say.
Security forces are said to be using recordings of the demonstrations to compile lists of activists for arrest.
A source has told the BBC that as many as 10,000 people - many of them monks who led the demos - have been rounded up for interrogation in recent days.
The body of a Japanese reporter killed during the protests has arrived home.
Kenji Nagai, a video journalist with Japan's APF News, was shot dead while filming in Rangoon.
Japanese officials say he was shot at close range, contradicting earlier claims by the Burmese authorities that he was hit accidentally by a stray bullet.
Dozens are feared to have died during the bloody suppression of the protests last week.
Tactics of fear
Residents of the main city, Rangoon, say the streets are quiet during daylight hours, with the police and army keeping a low profile.
But during the overnight curfew, they say raids by the security forces continue.
The BBC's Chris Hogg, in neighbouring Thailand, says if it is a tactic designed to scare people, it is working.
Shari Villarosa, the most senior US diplomat in the country, described how arrests were occurring every night.
She said discontent in Rangoon had been "simmering for years", but has now turned to a mood of "anger and fear".
"It's been heightened by anger by what has been done against the demonstrators, the atrocities that have been committed against the monks," she said.
One Burmese who was rounded up has told the BBC that between six and 10,000 people have been held in detention camps for interrogation over the protests.
Many of those were monks. US diplomats said they had visited 15 monasteries and found them empty. Others were being barricaded and guarded by soldiers.
Reuters news agency reported that a slow trickle of monks and nuns were being freed from detention centres near Rangoon.
Some told the agency they had witnessed monks being beaten while they were asked about their identity, birthplace, parents and involvement in the protests.
Diplomatic visit
The Burmese regime - led by reclusive General Than Shwe - has been condemned for its actions across the world.
The UN's special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, met the general in Burma to relay concerns, and is due to report his findings to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon later.
Mr Gambari, who will brief the UN Security Council on Friday, also met opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi during his visit.
Burma has been under military dictatorship since 1962.
Multi-party elections were held in 1990 and were won comprehensively by Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party.
But the ruling junta - known for its corruption and mismanagement - dismissed the results and continued to exercise a stranglehold on power.
BBC News | October 4, 2007
Scores of Burmese have been arrested overnight, as the country's military continues its crackdown following last week's protests, witnesses say.
Security forces are said to be using recordings of the demonstrations to compile lists of activists for arrest.
A source has told the BBC that as many as 10,000 people - many of them monks who led the demos - have been rounded up for interrogation in recent days.
The body of a Japanese reporter killed during the protests has arrived home.
Kenji Nagai, a video journalist with Japan's APF News, was shot dead while filming in Rangoon.
Japanese officials say he was shot at close range, contradicting earlier claims by the Burmese authorities that he was hit accidentally by a stray bullet.
Dozens are feared to have died during the bloody suppression of the protests last week.
Tactics of fear
Residents of the main city, Rangoon, say the streets are quiet during daylight hours, with the police and army keeping a low profile.
But during the overnight curfew, they say raids by the security forces continue.
The BBC's Chris Hogg, in neighbouring Thailand, says if it is a tactic designed to scare people, it is working.
Shari Villarosa, the most senior US diplomat in the country, described how arrests were occurring every night.
She said discontent in Rangoon had been "simmering for years", but has now turned to a mood of "anger and fear".
"It's been heightened by anger by what has been done against the demonstrators, the atrocities that have been committed against the monks," she said.
One Burmese who was rounded up has told the BBC that between six and 10,000 people have been held in detention camps for interrogation over the protests.
Many of those were monks. US diplomats said they had visited 15 monasteries and found them empty. Others were being barricaded and guarded by soldiers.
Reuters news agency reported that a slow trickle of monks and nuns were being freed from detention centres near Rangoon.
Some told the agency they had witnessed monks being beaten while they were asked about their identity, birthplace, parents and involvement in the protests.
Diplomatic visit
The Burmese regime - led by reclusive General Than Shwe - has been condemned for its actions across the world.
The UN's special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, met the general in Burma to relay concerns, and is due to report his findings to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon later.
Mr Gambari, who will brief the UN Security Council on Friday, also met opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi during his visit.
Burma has been under military dictatorship since 1962.
Multi-party elections were held in 1990 and were won comprehensively by Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party.
But the ruling junta - known for its corruption and mismanagement - dismissed the results and continued to exercise a stranglehold on power.
IHT : Freed detainees tell of abuse in Myanmar
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Freed detainees tell of abuse in Myanmar
Reuters | October 4, 2007
YANGON, Myanmar: Despite gradually relaxing its grip on Myanmar's main city Thursday, the military continued to round up scores of people and interrogate hundreds more arrested during a crackdown last week on pro-democracy marches.
Although most are too terrified to talk, the monks and civilians slowly being freed from a makeshift interrogation center in north Yangon are giving a glimpse of the mechanics of the generals' dreaded internal security apparatus.
Their reports of verbal and physical abuse suggest that the head of the junta, Senior General Than Shwe, is paying scant regard to the calls for restraint delivered by the UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari, who flew back to New York to brief the UN secretary general, Ban Ki Moon.
"That is one of the top concerns of the international community," said Ban, who was to attend a meeting of the 15-member Security Council on Friday to discuss the crackdown in Myanmar.
People in the Kamayut district of central Yangon said soldiers had arrested scores of people Wednesday night for trying to impede a raid on the Aung Nyay Tharzi monastery a few days earlier and giving protection to fleeing Buddhist monks.
An additional 70 monks rounded up in arrests throughout the city a week ago were freed overnight from a government technical institute, following 80 monks and 149 women, who are believed to be nuns, released Wednesday.
One freed monk, who did not want his name published, said some detainees had been beaten when they refused to answer questions about their identity, birthplace, parents and involvement in the protests, the biggest challenge to the junta in nearly 20 years.
"The food and living conditions were horrible," said the monk, from the Pyinya Yamika Maha monastery in Yangon.
A relative of three women released Wednesday said detainees were being divided into four categories: passers-by, those who watched, those who clapped and those who joined in.
Official news media say 10 people were killed, including a Japanese journalist, in the crackdown, although Western governments say the true toll is probably far higher.
The body of the journalist, 50-year-old Kenji Nagai, shot to death near the Sule Pagoda in Yangon, was returned home Thursday for an autopsy. Its results could lead to Tokyo making good on a threat to scale back economic assistance to Myanmar, one of Asia's poorest countries.
Fears of a repeat of 1988, when the army killed an estimated 3,000 people in a crackdown lasting several months, were not realized, but even China, the junta's closest ally, made a rare public call for restraint.
Like Russia, a member of the Security Council that also wields veto power, China ruled out supporting any UN sanctions against the former Burma, a source of huge reserves of natural gas and other resources coveted by Beijing.
Singapore, the current chairman of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, said it "was encouraged by the access and cooperation" given by the junta to Gambari, who saw the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi twice during his four-day trip.
In New York, Ban said Gambari had been "assured" of another visit to Myanmar in November.
Gambari also met Prime Minister Lee Hsieng Loong of Singapore on his way back to New York, although the government of the city-state, one of Myanmar's biggest investors, declined to reveal all but the scantest details of their talks.
Reuters | October 4, 2007
YANGON, Myanmar: Despite gradually relaxing its grip on Myanmar's main city Thursday, the military continued to round up scores of people and interrogate hundreds more arrested during a crackdown last week on pro-democracy marches.
Although most are too terrified to talk, the monks and civilians slowly being freed from a makeshift interrogation center in north Yangon are giving a glimpse of the mechanics of the generals' dreaded internal security apparatus.
Their reports of verbal and physical abuse suggest that the head of the junta, Senior General Than Shwe, is paying scant regard to the calls for restraint delivered by the UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari, who flew back to New York to brief the UN secretary general, Ban Ki Moon.
"That is one of the top concerns of the international community," said Ban, who was to attend a meeting of the 15-member Security Council on Friday to discuss the crackdown in Myanmar.
People in the Kamayut district of central Yangon said soldiers had arrested scores of people Wednesday night for trying to impede a raid on the Aung Nyay Tharzi monastery a few days earlier and giving protection to fleeing Buddhist monks.
An additional 70 monks rounded up in arrests throughout the city a week ago were freed overnight from a government technical institute, following 80 monks and 149 women, who are believed to be nuns, released Wednesday.
One freed monk, who did not want his name published, said some detainees had been beaten when they refused to answer questions about their identity, birthplace, parents and involvement in the protests, the biggest challenge to the junta in nearly 20 years.
"The food and living conditions were horrible," said the monk, from the Pyinya Yamika Maha monastery in Yangon.
A relative of three women released Wednesday said detainees were being divided into four categories: passers-by, those who watched, those who clapped and those who joined in.
Official news media say 10 people were killed, including a Japanese journalist, in the crackdown, although Western governments say the true toll is probably far higher.
The body of the journalist, 50-year-old Kenji Nagai, shot to death near the Sule Pagoda in Yangon, was returned home Thursday for an autopsy. Its results could lead to Tokyo making good on a threat to scale back economic assistance to Myanmar, one of Asia's poorest countries.
Fears of a repeat of 1988, when the army killed an estimated 3,000 people in a crackdown lasting several months, were not realized, but even China, the junta's closest ally, made a rare public call for restraint.
Like Russia, a member of the Security Council that also wields veto power, China ruled out supporting any UN sanctions against the former Burma, a source of huge reserves of natural gas and other resources coveted by Beijing.
Singapore, the current chairman of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, said it "was encouraged by the access and cooperation" given by the junta to Gambari, who saw the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi twice during his four-day trip.
In New York, Ban said Gambari had been "assured" of another visit to Myanmar in November.
Gambari also met Prime Minister Lee Hsieng Loong of Singapore on his way back to New York, although the government of the city-state, one of Myanmar's biggest investors, declined to reveal all but the scantest details of their talks.
WaPo : Burmese Troops Carry Out Nighttime Arrests; Monks Put to Flight
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Burmese Troops Carry Out Nighttime Arrests; Monks Put to Flight
Associated Press | October 4, 2007
RANGOON, Burma, Oct. 3 -- After crushing the democracy uprising with guns, Burma's military junta switched to an intimidation campaign Wednesday, sending troops to drag people from their homes in the middle of the night and letting others know they were marked for arrest.
People living near the Shwedagon Pagoda, Burma's most revered shrine and a flash point of unrest during the protests, reported that police swept through several dozen homes about 3 a.m., dragging away many men for questioning.
A U.N. Development Program employee, Myint Nwe Moe, and her husband, brother-in-law and driver were among those taken away by police, the U.N. agency said.
Dozens of Buddhist monks jammed Rangoon's main train station after being ordered to vacate their monasteries -- centers of the anti-government demonstrations -- and go back to their home towns and villages.
It was not clear who ordered them out. Older abbots in charge of monasteries are widely seen here as tied to the ruling military junta, while younger monks are generally more sympathetic to the democracy movement.
Following the night of widespread detentions, military vehicles patrolled the streets in Rangoon, Burma's biggest city, with loudspeakers blaring a warning: "We have photographs. We are going to make arrests!"
"People are terrified," said Shari Villarosa, the acting U.S. ambassador in Burma. "People have been unhappy for a long time. Since the events of last week, there's now the unhappiness combined with anger, and fear."
Anti-junta demonstrations broke out in mid-August over a sharp increase in the price of fuel, then ballooned when monks took the lead last month. But the military crushed the protests a week ago with bullets, tear gas and clubs. The government said 10 people were killed, but dissident groups put the death toll at up to 200 and say 6,000 people were detained.
Villarosa said her staff had found as many as 15 monasteries completely empty during visits in recent days. Others were barricaded by the military and declared off-limits to outsiders. "There is a significantly reduced number of monks on the streets. Where are the monks? What has happened to them?" she said.
While troops rounded up people in Rangoon, some arrested protesters were let go elsewhere. The Democratic Voice of Burma, a dissident radio station based in Norway, said authorities freed 90 of about 400 monks who were detained in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin state, during a Sept. 25 raid on monasteries.
In Brussels, European Union countries agreed to widen sanctions on Burma's military government. Diplomats said new sanctions included an expanded visa ban for junta members, more controls on investment in Burma, and a ban on trade in the country's metals, timber and gemstones.
The new measures did not include a specific ban on European oil and gas companies doing business in Burma, diplomats said.
The Southeast Asian nation, also known as Myanmar, has vast oil and gas deposits that are hungrily eyed by neighbors -- India, China and Thailand -- as well as by multinational companies. Burma is also known for its minerals, gems and timber.
Among those killed when troops opened fire on unarmed protesters in Rangoon last week was Japanese television cameraman Kenji Nagai of the APF news agency. His body was flown to Tokyo on Wednesday, and Japan said it was reconsidering its aid to Burma.
Also on Wednesday, the advocacy group Human Rights Watch presented in Bangkok a man they said was a Burmese army major who had fled his country. The group released a transcript of an interview with the unidentified man in which he expressed shock at the crackdown.
The demonstrators "were very peaceful. Later when I heard they were shot and killed and the armed forces used tear gas, I was really upset," the man was quoted as saying.
Associated Press | October 4, 2007
RANGOON, Burma, Oct. 3 -- After crushing the democracy uprising with guns, Burma's military junta switched to an intimidation campaign Wednesday, sending troops to drag people from their homes in the middle of the night and letting others know they were marked for arrest.
People living near the Shwedagon Pagoda, Burma's most revered shrine and a flash point of unrest during the protests, reported that police swept through several dozen homes about 3 a.m., dragging away many men for questioning.
A U.N. Development Program employee, Myint Nwe Moe, and her husband, brother-in-law and driver were among those taken away by police, the U.N. agency said.
Dozens of Buddhist monks jammed Rangoon's main train station after being ordered to vacate their monasteries -- centers of the anti-government demonstrations -- and go back to their home towns and villages.
It was not clear who ordered them out. Older abbots in charge of monasteries are widely seen here as tied to the ruling military junta, while younger monks are generally more sympathetic to the democracy movement.
Following the night of widespread detentions, military vehicles patrolled the streets in Rangoon, Burma's biggest city, with loudspeakers blaring a warning: "We have photographs. We are going to make arrests!"
"People are terrified," said Shari Villarosa, the acting U.S. ambassador in Burma. "People have been unhappy for a long time. Since the events of last week, there's now the unhappiness combined with anger, and fear."
Anti-junta demonstrations broke out in mid-August over a sharp increase in the price of fuel, then ballooned when monks took the lead last month. But the military crushed the protests a week ago with bullets, tear gas and clubs. The government said 10 people were killed, but dissident groups put the death toll at up to 200 and say 6,000 people were detained.
Villarosa said her staff had found as many as 15 monasteries completely empty during visits in recent days. Others were barricaded by the military and declared off-limits to outsiders. "There is a significantly reduced number of monks on the streets. Where are the monks? What has happened to them?" she said.
While troops rounded up people in Rangoon, some arrested protesters were let go elsewhere. The Democratic Voice of Burma, a dissident radio station based in Norway, said authorities freed 90 of about 400 monks who were detained in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin state, during a Sept. 25 raid on monasteries.
In Brussels, European Union countries agreed to widen sanctions on Burma's military government. Diplomats said new sanctions included an expanded visa ban for junta members, more controls on investment in Burma, and a ban on trade in the country's metals, timber and gemstones.
The new measures did not include a specific ban on European oil and gas companies doing business in Burma, diplomats said.
The Southeast Asian nation, also known as Myanmar, has vast oil and gas deposits that are hungrily eyed by neighbors -- India, China and Thailand -- as well as by multinational companies. Burma is also known for its minerals, gems and timber.
Among those killed when troops opened fire on unarmed protesters in Rangoon last week was Japanese television cameraman Kenji Nagai of the APF news agency. His body was flown to Tokyo on Wednesday, and Japan said it was reconsidering its aid to Burma.
Also on Wednesday, the advocacy group Human Rights Watch presented in Bangkok a man they said was a Burmese army major who had fled his country. The group released a transcript of an interview with the unidentified man in which he expressed shock at the crackdown.
The demonstrators "were very peaceful. Later when I heard they were shot and killed and the armed forces used tear gas, I was really upset," the man was quoted as saying.
Toronto Star : Burmese roundup continues
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
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.
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.
NYT : In Crackdown, Myanmar Junta Unplugs Internet
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
In Crackdown, Myanmar Junta Unplugs Internet
BY SETH MYDANS | October 4, 2007
BANGKOK, Oct. 3 — It was about as simple and uncomplicated as shooting demonstrators in the streets. Embarrassed by smuggled video and photographs that showed their people rising up against them, the generals who run Myanmar simply switched off the Internet.
Until last Friday television screens and newspapers abroad were flooded with scenes of tens of thousands of red-robed monks in the streets and of chaos and violence as the junta stamped out the biggest popular uprising there in two decades.
But then the images, text messages and posts stopped, shut down by generals who belatedly grasped the power of the Internet to jeopardize their crackdown.
“Finally they realized that this was their biggest enemy, and they took it down,” said Aung Zaw, editor of an exile magazine called Irrawaddy, whose Web site has been a leading source of news over the past weeks.
His Web site has been attacked by a virus whose timing raises the possibility that the military government has a few skilled hackers in its ranks.
The efficiency of this latest, technological crackdown raises the question of whether the much-vaunted role of the Internet in undermining repression can stand up to a determined and ruthless government — or whether a tiny, economically isolated country like Myanmar is an exception.
“The crackdown on the media and on information flow is parallel to the physical crackdown,” said David Mathieson, an expert on Myanmar with Human Rights Watch, “and it seems they’ve done it quite effectively. Since Friday we’ve seen no new images come out.”
There are just two Internet service providers in Myanmar, and it was not complicated to shut them down, he said. Along with the Internet, the junta cut off most telephone access to the outside world. Soldiers on the streets confiscated cameras and video-recording cellphones.
In keeping with the country’s self-imposed isolation over the past half-century, Myanmar’s junta seemed prepared to cut itself off from the virtual world just as it had from the world at large.
At the same time, the junta turned to the oldest tactic of all to silence an opposition — fear. Local journalists and people caught transmitting information or using cameras are being threatened and arrested, according to Burmese exile groups.
In one final, hurried telephone call, Mr. Aung Zaw said, one of his long-time sources said goodbye.
“We have done enough,” he said the source told him. “We can no longer move around. It is over to you, we cannot do anything any more. We are down. We are hunted by soldiers, we are down.”
There are still images in the pipeline, Mr. Aung Zaw said, and as soon as he receives them and his Web site is back up again, the world will see them.
But Mr. Mathieson said the country’s dissidents were reverting to tactics of the past, smuggling images out through cellphones by breaking the files down and reassembling them.
It is not clear, though, how much longer the generals can hold back the future. Technology is making it harder for dictators and juntas to draw a curtain of secrecy around themselves.
“There are always ways people find of getting information out, and authorities always have to struggle with them,” said Mitchell Stephens, a professor of journalism at New York University and the author of “A History of News.”
“There are fewer and fewer events that we don’t have film images of: the world is filled with Zapruders,” he said, referring to Abraham Zapruder, an onlooker who was the only person who recorded the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
Before last Friday’s blackout, Myanmar’s hit-and-run journalists were staging a virtuoso demonstration of the power of the Internet to outmaneuver a repressive government. A guerrilla army of citizen reporters was smuggling out pictures even as events were unfolding, and the world was watching.
“For those of us who study the history of communication technology, this is of equal importance to the telegraph, which was the first medium that separated communications and transportation,” said Frank A. Moretti, executive director of the Center for New Media Teaching and Learning at Columbia University.
Since the protests began in mid-August, people have sent images and words through SMS text messages and e-mails and on daily blogs, according to some of the exile groups that received their messages. They have posted notices on Facebook, the social networking Web site. They have sent tiny messages on e-cards. They have updated the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
They also used Internet versions of “pigeons” — the couriers reporters used in the past to carry out film and news — handing their material to embassies or nongovernment organizations that had access to satellite connections.
Within hours, the images and reports were broadcast back into Myanmar by foreign radio and television stations, informing and connecting a public that hears only propaganda from its government.
These technological tricks may offer a model to people elsewhere who are trying to outwit repressive governments. But the generals’ heavy-handed response is probably a less useful model.
Other nations, with larger economies and more ties to the outside world, have more at stake. China, for one, could not consider cutting itself off as Myanmar has done, and so control of the Internet is an industry in itself.
“In China it’s massive,” said Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project and an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
“There’s surveillance and intimidation, there’s legal regulation and there is commercial leverage to force private Internet companies to self-censor,” he said. “And there is what we call the Great Firewall, which blocks hundreds of thousands of Web sites outside of China.”
Yet for all its efforts, even China cannot entirely control the Internet, an easier task in a smaller country like Myanmar.
As technology makes everyone a potential reporter, the challenge in risky places like Myanmar will be accuracy, said Vincent Brossel, head of the Asian section of the press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders.
“Rumors are the worst enemy of independent journalism,” he said. “Already we are hearing so many strange things. So if you have no flow of information and the spread of rumors in a country that is using propaganda — that’s it. You are destroying the story, and day by day it goes down.”
The technological advances on the streets of Myanmar are the latest in a long history of revolutions in the transmission of news — from the sailing ship to the telegraph to international telephone lines and the telex machine to computers and satellite telephones.
“Today every citizen is a war correspondent,” said Phillip Knightley, author of “The First Casualty,” a classic history of war reporting that starts with letters home from soldiers in Crimea in the 1850s and ends with the “living room war” in Vietnam in the 1970s when people could watch a war for the first time on television.
“Mobile phones with video of broadcast quality have made it possible for anyone to report a war,” he said in an e-mail interview. “You just have to be there. No trouble getting a start, the broadcasters have been begging viewers to send their stuff.”
BY SETH MYDANS | October 4, 2007
BANGKOK, Oct. 3 — It was about as simple and uncomplicated as shooting demonstrators in the streets. Embarrassed by smuggled video and photographs that showed their people rising up against them, the generals who run Myanmar simply switched off the Internet.
Until last Friday television screens and newspapers abroad were flooded with scenes of tens of thousands of red-robed monks in the streets and of chaos and violence as the junta stamped out the biggest popular uprising there in two decades.
But then the images, text messages and posts stopped, shut down by generals who belatedly grasped the power of the Internet to jeopardize their crackdown.
“Finally they realized that this was their biggest enemy, and they took it down,” said Aung Zaw, editor of an exile magazine called Irrawaddy, whose Web site has been a leading source of news over the past weeks.
His Web site has been attacked by a virus whose timing raises the possibility that the military government has a few skilled hackers in its ranks.
The efficiency of this latest, technological crackdown raises the question of whether the much-vaunted role of the Internet in undermining repression can stand up to a determined and ruthless government — or whether a tiny, economically isolated country like Myanmar is an exception.
“The crackdown on the media and on information flow is parallel to the physical crackdown,” said David Mathieson, an expert on Myanmar with Human Rights Watch, “and it seems they’ve done it quite effectively. Since Friday we’ve seen no new images come out.”
There are just two Internet service providers in Myanmar, and it was not complicated to shut them down, he said. Along with the Internet, the junta cut off most telephone access to the outside world. Soldiers on the streets confiscated cameras and video-recording cellphones.
In keeping with the country’s self-imposed isolation over the past half-century, Myanmar’s junta seemed prepared to cut itself off from the virtual world just as it had from the world at large.
At the same time, the junta turned to the oldest tactic of all to silence an opposition — fear. Local journalists and people caught transmitting information or using cameras are being threatened and arrested, according to Burmese exile groups.
In one final, hurried telephone call, Mr. Aung Zaw said, one of his long-time sources said goodbye.
“We have done enough,” he said the source told him. “We can no longer move around. It is over to you, we cannot do anything any more. We are down. We are hunted by soldiers, we are down.”
There are still images in the pipeline, Mr. Aung Zaw said, and as soon as he receives them and his Web site is back up again, the world will see them.
But Mr. Mathieson said the country’s dissidents were reverting to tactics of the past, smuggling images out through cellphones by breaking the files down and reassembling them.
It is not clear, though, how much longer the generals can hold back the future. Technology is making it harder for dictators and juntas to draw a curtain of secrecy around themselves.
“There are always ways people find of getting information out, and authorities always have to struggle with them,” said Mitchell Stephens, a professor of journalism at New York University and the author of “A History of News.”
“There are fewer and fewer events that we don’t have film images of: the world is filled with Zapruders,” he said, referring to Abraham Zapruder, an onlooker who was the only person who recorded the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
Before last Friday’s blackout, Myanmar’s hit-and-run journalists were staging a virtuoso demonstration of the power of the Internet to outmaneuver a repressive government. A guerrilla army of citizen reporters was smuggling out pictures even as events were unfolding, and the world was watching.
“For those of us who study the history of communication technology, this is of equal importance to the telegraph, which was the first medium that separated communications and transportation,” said Frank A. Moretti, executive director of the Center for New Media Teaching and Learning at Columbia University.
Since the protests began in mid-August, people have sent images and words through SMS text messages and e-mails and on daily blogs, according to some of the exile groups that received their messages. They have posted notices on Facebook, the social networking Web site. They have sent tiny messages on e-cards. They have updated the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
They also used Internet versions of “pigeons” — the couriers reporters used in the past to carry out film and news — handing their material to embassies or nongovernment organizations that had access to satellite connections.
Within hours, the images and reports were broadcast back into Myanmar by foreign radio and television stations, informing and connecting a public that hears only propaganda from its government.
These technological tricks may offer a model to people elsewhere who are trying to outwit repressive governments. But the generals’ heavy-handed response is probably a less useful model.
Other nations, with larger economies and more ties to the outside world, have more at stake. China, for one, could not consider cutting itself off as Myanmar has done, and so control of the Internet is an industry in itself.
“In China it’s massive,” said Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project and an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
“There’s surveillance and intimidation, there’s legal regulation and there is commercial leverage to force private Internet companies to self-censor,” he said. “And there is what we call the Great Firewall, which blocks hundreds of thousands of Web sites outside of China.”
Yet for all its efforts, even China cannot entirely control the Internet, an easier task in a smaller country like Myanmar.
As technology makes everyone a potential reporter, the challenge in risky places like Myanmar will be accuracy, said Vincent Brossel, head of the Asian section of the press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders.
“Rumors are the worst enemy of independent journalism,” he said. “Already we are hearing so many strange things. So if you have no flow of information and the spread of rumors in a country that is using propaganda — that’s it. You are destroying the story, and day by day it goes down.”
The technological advances on the streets of Myanmar are the latest in a long history of revolutions in the transmission of news — from the sailing ship to the telegraph to international telephone lines and the telex machine to computers and satellite telephones.
“Today every citizen is a war correspondent,” said Phillip Knightley, author of “The First Casualty,” a classic history of war reporting that starts with letters home from soldiers in Crimea in the 1850s and ends with the “living room war” in Vietnam in the 1970s when people could watch a war for the first time on television.
“Mobile phones with video of broadcast quality have made it possible for anyone to report a war,” he said in an e-mail interview. “You just have to be there. No trouble getting a start, the broadcasters have been begging viewers to send their stuff.”
VOA : Burmese Government Continues Campaign of Fear and Repression
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Burmese Government Continues Campaign of Fear and Repression
By Nancy-Amelia Collins | Jakarta | October 3, 2007
The military government in Burma continues its campaign of fear and repression against its citizenry as the world waits for a report from U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari. He met with Burma's military leaders and detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, following violent suppression of pro-democracy protests in Burma last week. VOA's Nancy-Amelia Collins in Jakarta has more.
Reports of soldiers in military trucks looking for pro-democracy protesters, going into homes and arresting people filtered out of Burma's largest city Rangoon, as the military government continued to quash dissent against its harsh 45-year rule.
Meanwhile, U.N. special envoy to Burma briefed Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong about his four-day visit to Burma where he met twice with detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and once with Burma's military ruler General Than Shwe.
The Singapore prime minister said it was encouraged by the access and cooperation given to Gambari by the Burmese government. He had been sent by the United Nations to express the world's outrage over the violent crackdown and to negotiate a peaceful solution to the crisis.
Adding to the international chorus of condemnation was Australian Ambassador to the United Nations Robert Hill.
"We call for the immediate release of those arrested for exercising their fundamental human rights to peaceful protest and for humane treatment of all those detained," said Hill. "Australia is also introducing targeted financial measures against members of the Burmese regime and its supporters to increase pressure on them to engage in genuine political reform and national reconciliation."
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN, currently chaired by Singapore, has been seeking ways to respond to the repression in Burma. In an unusually sharp rebuke, it expressed "revulsion" over member Burma's actions last week.
A Singapore government statement said Prime Minister Lee told Gambari that ASEAN is fully behind the U.N. mission.
Gambari, who has refused to comment publicly on his mission, was in Singapore on his way to New York where he will brief the U.N. secretary general later this week.
A steep hike in fuel prices prompted protests against military rule in August that turned into massive demonstrations last month led by Burma's revered clergy.
The government responded by shooting, beating, killing and arresting monks, students, and civilians.
Rights groups fear the official figure of 10 dead during the crackdown is much higher, and put the number of arrests in the thousands.
Independent verification is difficult because foreign journalists are not allowed to enter the country.
By Nancy-Amelia Collins | Jakarta | October 3, 2007
The military government in Burma continues its campaign of fear and repression against its citizenry as the world waits for a report from U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari. He met with Burma's military leaders and detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, following violent suppression of pro-democracy protests in Burma last week. VOA's Nancy-Amelia Collins in Jakarta has more.
Reports of soldiers in military trucks looking for pro-democracy protesters, going into homes and arresting people filtered out of Burma's largest city Rangoon, as the military government continued to quash dissent against its harsh 45-year rule.
Meanwhile, U.N. special envoy to Burma briefed Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong about his four-day visit to Burma where he met twice with detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and once with Burma's military ruler General Than Shwe.
The Singapore prime minister said it was encouraged by the access and cooperation given to Gambari by the Burmese government. He had been sent by the United Nations to express the world's outrage over the violent crackdown and to negotiate a peaceful solution to the crisis.
Adding to the international chorus of condemnation was Australian Ambassador to the United Nations Robert Hill.
"We call for the immediate release of those arrested for exercising their fundamental human rights to peaceful protest and for humane treatment of all those detained," said Hill. "Australia is also introducing targeted financial measures against members of the Burmese regime and its supporters to increase pressure on them to engage in genuine political reform and national reconciliation."
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN, currently chaired by Singapore, has been seeking ways to respond to the repression in Burma. In an unusually sharp rebuke, it expressed "revulsion" over member Burma's actions last week.
A Singapore government statement said Prime Minister Lee told Gambari that ASEAN is fully behind the U.N. mission.
Gambari, who has refused to comment publicly on his mission, was in Singapore on his way to New York where he will brief the U.N. secretary general later this week.
A steep hike in fuel prices prompted protests against military rule in August that turned into massive demonstrations last month led by Burma's revered clergy.
The government responded by shooting, beating, killing and arresting monks, students, and civilians.
Rights groups fear the official figure of 10 dead during the crackdown is much higher, and put the number of arrests in the thousands.
Independent verification is difficult because foreign journalists are not allowed to enter the country.
BBC : Burmese monks 'to be sent away'
Monday, October 01, 2007
Burmese monks 'to be sent away'
October 1, 2007
Thousands of monks detained in Burma's main city of Rangoon will be sent to prisons in the far north of the country, sources have told the BBC.
About 4,000 monks have been rounded up in the past week as the military government has tried to stamp out pro-democracy protests.
They are being held at a disused race course and a technical college.
Sources from a government-sponsored militia said they would soon be moved away from Rangoon.
The monks have been disrobed and shackled, the sources told BBC radio's Burmese service. There are reports that the monks are refusing to eat.
The country has seen almost two weeks of sustained popular unrest, in the most serious challenge to the military leadership for more than two decades.
The authorities said 10 people were killed as the protests were dispersed, though diplomats and activists say the number of dead was many times higher.
The banned opposition broadcaster Democratic Voice of Burma has issued a picture which they say shows the body of a monk floating near the mouth of the Rangoon river.
Last week several monasteries were raided, and there were reports of monks being beaten and killed.
With many monks behind bars, the demonstrations have now died down.
On Monday, the centre of Rangoon was almost back to normal, a reporter, who cannot be identified for security reasons, told the BBC.
Most shops and temples have reopened and people appear to be getting on with their lives. But there seemed to be a group of soldiers around every corner, and very few monks about, the reporter said.
This is notable in a city where monks can usually be spotted going in and out of temples, shopping at street stalls and chatting in tea shops.
The atmosphere in Rangoon is tense, the reporter said. Local people are well aware that the monks have been locked away and are afraid that they will be next.
The crackdown, in which unarmed protesters were beaten, tear-gassed, and shot at, has attracted condemnation from abroad, and even from Burma's neighbours in the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean).
Envoy still waiting
As well as preventing the demonstrations, the military junta has tried to block news of the unrest filtering out. Troops are stopping young men on the streets and in cars, searching for cameras that may be used to smuggle out images.
Most internet links are still down and mobile phone networks disrupted.
Official media has been warning Burmese people against co-operating with or using foreign news outlets.
A TV message on Monday referred to the BBC, Voice of America and Radio Free Asia as "assassins on air".
UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari was set to meet Burma's military leader General Than Shwe on Tuesday, officials said.
On Saturday, when Mr Gambari travelled to the new capital Naypidaw, he was allowed to meet only more junior members of the government.
On Sunday, Mr Gambari held talks with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon - the first foreigner to be permitted to do so for 10 months.
October 1, 2007
Thousands of monks detained in Burma's main city of Rangoon will be sent to prisons in the far north of the country, sources have told the BBC.
About 4,000 monks have been rounded up in the past week as the military government has tried to stamp out pro-democracy protests.
They are being held at a disused race course and a technical college.
Sources from a government-sponsored militia said they would soon be moved away from Rangoon.
The monks have been disrobed and shackled, the sources told BBC radio's Burmese service. There are reports that the monks are refusing to eat.
The country has seen almost two weeks of sustained popular unrest, in the most serious challenge to the military leadership for more than two decades.
The authorities said 10 people were killed as the protests were dispersed, though diplomats and activists say the number of dead was many times higher.
The banned opposition broadcaster Democratic Voice of Burma has issued a picture which they say shows the body of a monk floating near the mouth of the Rangoon river.
Last week several monasteries were raided, and there were reports of monks being beaten and killed.
With many monks behind bars, the demonstrations have now died down.
On Monday, the centre of Rangoon was almost back to normal, a reporter, who cannot be identified for security reasons, told the BBC.
Most shops and temples have reopened and people appear to be getting on with their lives. But there seemed to be a group of soldiers around every corner, and very few monks about, the reporter said.
This is notable in a city where monks can usually be spotted going in and out of temples, shopping at street stalls and chatting in tea shops.
The atmosphere in Rangoon is tense, the reporter said. Local people are well aware that the monks have been locked away and are afraid that they will be next.
The crackdown, in which unarmed protesters were beaten, tear-gassed, and shot at, has attracted condemnation from abroad, and even from Burma's neighbours in the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean).
Envoy still waiting
As well as preventing the demonstrations, the military junta has tried to block news of the unrest filtering out. Troops are stopping young men on the streets and in cars, searching for cameras that may be used to smuggle out images.
Most internet links are still down and mobile phone networks disrupted.
Official media has been warning Burmese people against co-operating with or using foreign news outlets.
A TV message on Monday referred to the BBC, Voice of America and Radio Free Asia as "assassins on air".
UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari was set to meet Burma's military leader General Than Shwe on Tuesday, officials said.
On Saturday, when Mr Gambari travelled to the new capital Naypidaw, he was allowed to meet only more junior members of the government.
On Sunday, Mr Gambari held talks with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon - the first foreigner to be permitted to do so for 10 months.
NYT : Myanmar Delays Meeting With Envoy
Monday, October 01, 2007
Myanmar Delays Meeting With Envoy
By SETH MYDANS | October 1, 2007
BANGKOK, Oct. 1 — The top leaders of Myanmar’s military junta delayed for a second day a meeting with a United Nations envoy who went to the country to urge restraint, after the violent suppression of pro-democracy demonstrators last week.
Diplomats in Myanmar said the envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, who had hoped to meet with the junta’s top leader, Senior General Than Shwe, on Sunday, was now scheduled to see him on Tuesday. Mr. Gambari’s hosts took him today to a seminar on relations between Europe and Southeast Asia, according to the diplomats, who requested anonymity in keeping with embassy policy.
The United Nations Security Council and several governments condemned the violence and emphasized the importance they placed on the top junta leaders meeting with Mr. Gambari.
The streets of Yangon, the country’s main city, were reported to be quiet today after the crackdown that began last Thursday on the antigovernment demonstrations, the largest this country had seen since the junta came to power in 1988. Soldiers were removing barricades and reopening access to the two pagodas that had been gathering places for the protests.
There was still no word on more than 1,000 people, including 700 Buddhist monks, who were reported to have been arrested. Diplomats and human rights groups said it was impossible to estimate the number of people who had been killed. They said the number was certainly higher than the 10 deaths acknowledged by the government.
The demonstrations, which at their height early last week brought an estimated 100,000 people into the streets of Yangon to demand an end to military rule, were sparked by widespread anger over steep fuel prices in August and swelled as Buddhist monks took a leading role.
On Sunday, Mr. Gambari was allowed to meet in Yangon with the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been held under house arrest for 12 of the last 18 years. Mr. Gambari was the last high-level foreign official to see her previously, on a visit last November.
Before meeting Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, Mr. Gambari was received by lower-ranking members of the junta in the country’s administrative capital, Naypyidaw.
After those meetings, the United Nations issued a statement saying that Mr. Gambari “looks forward to meeting Senior General Than Shwe, chairman of the State Peace and Development Council, before the conclusion of his mission.”
Mr. Gambari arrived in Yangon on Saturday, then flew to Naypyidaw, about 200 miles away, to meet members of the government, and returned to Yangon on Sunday. He flew back to Naypyidaw on Sunday night in the hope of meeting General Than Shwe.
When Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations dispatched Mr. Gambari on Sept. 26, the Security Council issued a statement that “urged restraint” by the government and “underlined the importance that Mr. Gambari be received by the authorities of Myanmar as soon as possible.”
Myanmar’s Southeast Asian neighbors also said it was urgent that the junta receive Mr. Gambari as a representative of international concern.
As condemnation of the junta has continued, members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, known as Asean, have issued increasingly sharp statements, moving away from what had proved a fruitless policy of friendly persuasion.
“I would like to emphasize the importance which the Asean countries, and indeed the whole international community, attach to Mr. Gambari’s mission,” Prime Minister Lee Hsien-loong of Singapore wrote in a letter to the generals dated Sept. 29 but released to reporters today.
“We are most disturbed by reports of the violent means that the authorities in Myanmar have deployed against the demonstrators, which have resulted in injuries and deaths,” Mr. Lee wrote. Singapore currently presides over Asean; Myanmar is one of the 10 members of the group. “The videos and photographs of what is happening on the streets of Yangon and other cities in Myanmar have evoked the revulsion of people throughout Southeast Asia and all over the world,” he wrote.
In an effort to shut down the flow of news from the closed and tightly controlled nation, the authorities have cut off Internet connections and have harassed and arrested local journalists.
News organizations reported that at least four Burmese journalists, including Min Zaw of the Japanese daily Tokyo Shimbun, had been arrested, and several others were presumed to have been arrested.
About 10 Burmese reporters have been physically attacked or prevented from working, including reporters for Reuters and Agence France-Presse, according to Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association.
A Japanese photographer, Kenji Nagai, was shot and killed at the height of the demonstrations last week, drawing protests from the Japanese government. In Tokyo, the chief Cabinet spokesman, Nobutaka Machbimura, said Japan was considering sanctions to protest the junta’s crackdown.
Reporters Without Borders said that a military censorship department, known as the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division, was harassing editors to get them to bring out issues of their newspapers and magazines containing propaganda articles. Human rights groups said some of magazines had suspended publication rather than carry these reports.
Striking back, the junta was pointing its finger at the international community. The government had been handling the protests “with care, using the least possible force,” said the government’s English-language mouthpiece, the New Light of Myanmar, on its Web site.
“Internal and external destructionists are applying various means to destroy those constructive endeavors by the government and the people and to cause unrest and instability,” it said.
One article urged people not to believe the news being reported by foreign radio stations and summed up its message with the headline: “Skyful of liars attempting to destroy the nation.”
By SETH MYDANS | October 1, 2007
BANGKOK, Oct. 1 — The top leaders of Myanmar’s military junta delayed for a second day a meeting with a United Nations envoy who went to the country to urge restraint, after the violent suppression of pro-democracy demonstrators last week.
Diplomats in Myanmar said the envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, who had hoped to meet with the junta’s top leader, Senior General Than Shwe, on Sunday, was now scheduled to see him on Tuesday. Mr. Gambari’s hosts took him today to a seminar on relations between Europe and Southeast Asia, according to the diplomats, who requested anonymity in keeping with embassy policy.
The United Nations Security Council and several governments condemned the violence and emphasized the importance they placed on the top junta leaders meeting with Mr. Gambari.
The streets of Yangon, the country’s main city, were reported to be quiet today after the crackdown that began last Thursday on the antigovernment demonstrations, the largest this country had seen since the junta came to power in 1988. Soldiers were removing barricades and reopening access to the two pagodas that had been gathering places for the protests.
There was still no word on more than 1,000 people, including 700 Buddhist monks, who were reported to have been arrested. Diplomats and human rights groups said it was impossible to estimate the number of people who had been killed. They said the number was certainly higher than the 10 deaths acknowledged by the government.
The demonstrations, which at their height early last week brought an estimated 100,000 people into the streets of Yangon to demand an end to military rule, were sparked by widespread anger over steep fuel prices in August and swelled as Buddhist monks took a leading role.
On Sunday, Mr. Gambari was allowed to meet in Yangon with the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been held under house arrest for 12 of the last 18 years. Mr. Gambari was the last high-level foreign official to see her previously, on a visit last November.
Before meeting Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, Mr. Gambari was received by lower-ranking members of the junta in the country’s administrative capital, Naypyidaw.
After those meetings, the United Nations issued a statement saying that Mr. Gambari “looks forward to meeting Senior General Than Shwe, chairman of the State Peace and Development Council, before the conclusion of his mission.”
Mr. Gambari arrived in Yangon on Saturday, then flew to Naypyidaw, about 200 miles away, to meet members of the government, and returned to Yangon on Sunday. He flew back to Naypyidaw on Sunday night in the hope of meeting General Than Shwe.
When Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations dispatched Mr. Gambari on Sept. 26, the Security Council issued a statement that “urged restraint” by the government and “underlined the importance that Mr. Gambari be received by the authorities of Myanmar as soon as possible.”
Myanmar’s Southeast Asian neighbors also said it was urgent that the junta receive Mr. Gambari as a representative of international concern.
As condemnation of the junta has continued, members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, known as Asean, have issued increasingly sharp statements, moving away from what had proved a fruitless policy of friendly persuasion.
“I would like to emphasize the importance which the Asean countries, and indeed the whole international community, attach to Mr. Gambari’s mission,” Prime Minister Lee Hsien-loong of Singapore wrote in a letter to the generals dated Sept. 29 but released to reporters today.
“We are most disturbed by reports of the violent means that the authorities in Myanmar have deployed against the demonstrators, which have resulted in injuries and deaths,” Mr. Lee wrote. Singapore currently presides over Asean; Myanmar is one of the 10 members of the group. “The videos and photographs of what is happening on the streets of Yangon and other cities in Myanmar have evoked the revulsion of people throughout Southeast Asia and all over the world,” he wrote.
In an effort to shut down the flow of news from the closed and tightly controlled nation, the authorities have cut off Internet connections and have harassed and arrested local journalists.
News organizations reported that at least four Burmese journalists, including Min Zaw of the Japanese daily Tokyo Shimbun, had been arrested, and several others were presumed to have been arrested.
About 10 Burmese reporters have been physically attacked or prevented from working, including reporters for Reuters and Agence France-Presse, according to Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association.
A Japanese photographer, Kenji Nagai, was shot and killed at the height of the demonstrations last week, drawing protests from the Japanese government. In Tokyo, the chief Cabinet spokesman, Nobutaka Machbimura, said Japan was considering sanctions to protest the junta’s crackdown.
Reporters Without Borders said that a military censorship department, known as the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division, was harassing editors to get them to bring out issues of their newspapers and magazines containing propaganda articles. Human rights groups said some of magazines had suspended publication rather than carry these reports.
Striking back, the junta was pointing its finger at the international community. The government had been handling the protests “with care, using the least possible force,” said the government’s English-language mouthpiece, the New Light of Myanmar, on its Web site.
“Internal and external destructionists are applying various means to destroy those constructive endeavors by the government and the people and to cause unrest and instability,” it said.
One article urged people not to believe the news being reported by foreign radio stations and summed up its message with the headline: “Skyful of liars attempting to destroy the nation.”
SMH : If we all hid, then nothing would be different
Monday, October 01, 2007
If we all hid, then nothing would be different
This 39-year-old Burmese man, who has taken part in the protests in Rangoon, spoke to Helen Pidd on condition of anonymity.
October 1, 2007
TODAY was the first day I went to the protests on my own. All my friends were too scared to go out on the streets after being gassed and shot at over the last few days.
I woke up feeling more depressed and less optimistic than I have all week, but I felt it was my duty to carry on protesting. I was frightened, but aren't we all? If everybody hid indoors, nothing would ever change, and we would never be able to draw attention to the hopeless situation our country is facing. I need to stand and be counted.
When I arrived in the [city] centre, there were about 20,000 people gathered in the street, far fewer than earlier in the week, when there were up to 100,000 people. The crowd was made up of ordinary citizens; the average age was probably 25, though there were older people, too. I didn't see more than five or six monks. They are all still being kept somewhere secret after the military rounded them up on Wednesday night. We still don't know where they are or whether they are OK.
I couldn't believe it when I heard about monks being killed: they are the ones who bless babies after they have been born, and they remain hugely important to Buddhists throughout their lives.
Almost everyone in Burma is Buddhist, including 99 per cent of the army and police, so I can't understand how they could even consider laying a finger on a monk, let alone murdering them.
On other days we have marched around town. But today we just stood together, peacefully and quietly.
We didn't even clap or shout any slogans and, unlike before, no one was carrying the flag of the opposition party, the National League for Democracy, or Buddhist flags. The important thing was simply being there.
Then, at around 1 o'clock, the military arrived at one end of the road and tried to break up the group. Before long another truck appeared at the other end, and I saw three or four other trucks pass, filled with protesters.
The crowd then got angry, and people started swearing at the soldiers … That's when the soldiers started shooting. Not teargas, but bullets.
I was about 20 yards (18 metres) away, but I didn't get hit. I don't know if anyone else did, as I ran away as fast as I could. I was too frightened to turn around.
I ran to the cafe where my friends were gathered and told them what I had seen, though they had been following it on CNN. I felt so, so sad.
I am rapidly losing hope. After such a joyful beginning, I now don't believe that we will be able to change anything.
This 39-year-old Burmese man, who has taken part in the protests in Rangoon, spoke to Helen Pidd on condition of anonymity.
October 1, 2007
TODAY was the first day I went to the protests on my own. All my friends were too scared to go out on the streets after being gassed and shot at over the last few days.
I woke up feeling more depressed and less optimistic than I have all week, but I felt it was my duty to carry on protesting. I was frightened, but aren't we all? If everybody hid indoors, nothing would ever change, and we would never be able to draw attention to the hopeless situation our country is facing. I need to stand and be counted.
When I arrived in the [city] centre, there were about 20,000 people gathered in the street, far fewer than earlier in the week, when there were up to 100,000 people. The crowd was made up of ordinary citizens; the average age was probably 25, though there were older people, too. I didn't see more than five or six monks. They are all still being kept somewhere secret after the military rounded them up on Wednesday night. We still don't know where they are or whether they are OK.
I couldn't believe it when I heard about monks being killed: they are the ones who bless babies after they have been born, and they remain hugely important to Buddhists throughout their lives.
Almost everyone in Burma is Buddhist, including 99 per cent of the army and police, so I can't understand how they could even consider laying a finger on a monk, let alone murdering them.
On other days we have marched around town. But today we just stood together, peacefully and quietly.
We didn't even clap or shout any slogans and, unlike before, no one was carrying the flag of the opposition party, the National League for Democracy, or Buddhist flags. The important thing was simply being there.
Then, at around 1 o'clock, the military arrived at one end of the road and tried to break up the group. Before long another truck appeared at the other end, and I saw three or four other trucks pass, filled with protesters.
The crowd then got angry, and people started swearing at the soldiers … That's when the soldiers started shooting. Not teargas, but bullets.
I was about 20 yards (18 metres) away, but I didn't get hit. I don't know if anyone else did, as I ran away as fast as I could. I was too frightened to turn around.
I ran to the cafe where my friends were gathered and told them what I had seen, though they had been following it on CNN. I felt so, so sad.
I am rapidly losing hope. After such a joyful beginning, I now don't believe that we will be able to change anything.
Reuters : Secrecy shrouds U.N. mission to Myanmar
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Secrecy shrouds U.N. mission to Myanmar
By Aung Hla Tun | September 29, 2007
YANGON (Reuters) - An urgent United Nations mission to bring Myanmar's ruling generals and their many foes to the peace table was shrouded in secrecy on Sunday with no word on progress from the country's new jungle capital.
Officials were unreachable in Naypyidaw, 240 miles to the north of Yangon which has been the centre of an uprising led by Buddhist monks. Since mid-week the junta has been squeezing the life out of the protests by arresting or confining monks and barricading off the city centre.
There was no word even on who U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari has met in Naypyidaw, the greenfield site where the junta moved the entire government apparatus at just a few hours notice in 2005, apparently because astrologers had defined the auspicious hour for the shift.
The generals, directing moves to throttle the protests in Yangon and other cities from Naypyidaw, usually ignore outside pressure. Yet they bowed to the chorus of international concern that followed soldiers shooting down peaceful protesters last week to allow Gambari in at short notice.
The heavy-handed suppression of the protests had prompted criticism even from China, the closest the junta have to an ally, and rare condemnation from ASEAN (the Association of South East Asian Nations), of which Myanmar is a member.
State-run media have proclaimed the restoration of peace and stability, and insist that security forces handled the protests "with care, using the least possible force". Diplomats flown to Naypyidaw received similar assurances.
FEW ON STREETS
At their height last Monday and Tuesday the protests in central Yangon, formerly Rangoon, filled five city blocks. They are now reduced to a few hundred people taunting and cursing security forces, who have fenced off the protest area between two main pagodas, then vanishing into alleys when charged.
There is no sign now of the maroon-robed monks, the moral core of the deeply Buddhist nation, whose column stretched nearly a kilometer (more than half a mile) at the height of the protests against 45 years of military rule.
The monks were either arrested by the hundreds in overnight raids on their monasteries, or are penned in there by surrounding security forces who began a crackdown on Wednesday in Yangon, formerly known as Rangoon.
Soldiers and police fire occasional warning shots, ensuring the city remains scared of a repeat of 1988, when the army put down an uprising killing an estimated 3,000 people.
But there have been no further reports of deaths in the protests, which began in August with small marches against shock fuel price rises. The official count is 10 killed. Western governments believe the real toll is much higher.
GAMBARI TO MEET SUU KYI
The United States said Gambari going virtually directly to Naypyidaw, whisked out of Yangon as soon as he arrived from Singapore on Saturday, was a reason to worry about his mission, which followed an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting on Myanmar prompted by the bloody crackdown on protests.
"We have concerns that Mr. Gambari was swiftly moved from Rangoon to the new capital in the interior, far from population centers," White House National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in a statement.
He urged the junta to allow Gambari wide access to people, including religious leaders and detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Gambari was due to meet Suu Kyi, who has spent about 12 of the last 18 years in some form of detention, when he returned to Yangon.
The two met a year ago, the last time any senior foreign figure has seen the democracy icon, who has been confined to her lakeside Yangon villa without a telephone and requiring official permission, granted rarely, to receive visitors.
Since she was last detained in May 2003, some of her countrymen have been able to see her just once -- early in the monk-led protests when marchers were allowed through the barricades sealing off her street.
Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy won a landslide election victory in 1990 which the generals annulled, appeared at the gate of the house, riot police between her and the protesters.
There has been no explanation, and no repeat, of the incident.
However, in a sign any concessions to the protesters by the generals would be limited, state television is publicizing marches around the country condemning the Yangon protests and officials say there will be more during Gambari's visit.
© Reuters 2007 All rights reserved
By Aung Hla Tun | September 29, 2007
YANGON (Reuters) - An urgent United Nations mission to bring Myanmar's ruling generals and their many foes to the peace table was shrouded in secrecy on Sunday with no word on progress from the country's new jungle capital.
Officials were unreachable in Naypyidaw, 240 miles to the north of Yangon which has been the centre of an uprising led by Buddhist monks. Since mid-week the junta has been squeezing the life out of the protests by arresting or confining monks and barricading off the city centre.
There was no word even on who U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari has met in Naypyidaw, the greenfield site where the junta moved the entire government apparatus at just a few hours notice in 2005, apparently because astrologers had defined the auspicious hour for the shift.
The generals, directing moves to throttle the protests in Yangon and other cities from Naypyidaw, usually ignore outside pressure. Yet they bowed to the chorus of international concern that followed soldiers shooting down peaceful protesters last week to allow Gambari in at short notice.
The heavy-handed suppression of the protests had prompted criticism even from China, the closest the junta have to an ally, and rare condemnation from ASEAN (the Association of South East Asian Nations), of which Myanmar is a member.
State-run media have proclaimed the restoration of peace and stability, and insist that security forces handled the protests "with care, using the least possible force". Diplomats flown to Naypyidaw received similar assurances.
FEW ON STREETS
At their height last Monday and Tuesday the protests in central Yangon, formerly Rangoon, filled five city blocks. They are now reduced to a few hundred people taunting and cursing security forces, who have fenced off the protest area between two main pagodas, then vanishing into alleys when charged.
There is no sign now of the maroon-robed monks, the moral core of the deeply Buddhist nation, whose column stretched nearly a kilometer (more than half a mile) at the height of the protests against 45 years of military rule.
The monks were either arrested by the hundreds in overnight raids on their monasteries, or are penned in there by surrounding security forces who began a crackdown on Wednesday in Yangon, formerly known as Rangoon.
Soldiers and police fire occasional warning shots, ensuring the city remains scared of a repeat of 1988, when the army put down an uprising killing an estimated 3,000 people.
But there have been no further reports of deaths in the protests, which began in August with small marches against shock fuel price rises. The official count is 10 killed. Western governments believe the real toll is much higher.
GAMBARI TO MEET SUU KYI
The United States said Gambari going virtually directly to Naypyidaw, whisked out of Yangon as soon as he arrived from Singapore on Saturday, was a reason to worry about his mission, which followed an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting on Myanmar prompted by the bloody crackdown on protests.
"We have concerns that Mr. Gambari was swiftly moved from Rangoon to the new capital in the interior, far from population centers," White House National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in a statement.
He urged the junta to allow Gambari wide access to people, including religious leaders and detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Gambari was due to meet Suu Kyi, who has spent about 12 of the last 18 years in some form of detention, when he returned to Yangon.
The two met a year ago, the last time any senior foreign figure has seen the democracy icon, who has been confined to her lakeside Yangon villa without a telephone and requiring official permission, granted rarely, to receive visitors.
Since she was last detained in May 2003, some of her countrymen have been able to see her just once -- early in the monk-led protests when marchers were allowed through the barricades sealing off her street.
Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy won a landslide election victory in 1990 which the generals annulled, appeared at the gate of the house, riot police between her and the protesters.
There has been no explanation, and no repeat, of the incident.
However, in a sign any concessions to the protesters by the generals would be limited, state television is publicizing marches around the country condemning the Yangon protests and officials say there will be more during Gambari's visit.
© Reuters 2007 All rights reserved
IHT : Residents express despair as troops take back control in Myanmar
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Residents express despair as troops take back control in Myanmar
The Associated Press | September 28, 2007
YANGON, Myanmar: Residents worried that pro-democracy protests could be weakening after soldiers and police in Myanmar took control of the streets, firing tear gas and warning shots to scatter demonstrators who ventured out and sealing off Buddhist monasteries.
The streets were quiet early Saturday and monks, who have provided the backbone of recent rallies calling for an end to 45 years of military rule, were locked behind temple gates in the two largest cities, Yangon and Mandalay. Additional troops arrived overnight, consolidating the government's control of urban areas.
Internet links have been cut.
"I don't think that we have any more hope to win," said a young woman who took part in a massive demonstration Thursday that was broken up when troops opened fire into a crowd. She was separated from her boyfriend and has not seen him since. "The monks are the ones who give us courage."
Daily protests drawing tens of thousands of people had grown into the stiffest challenge to the ruling military junta in two decades, a crisis that began more than a month ago when people in the desperately poor nation of 54 million started rallying against a massive fuel price increase. The demonstrations escalated when monks joined in.
The junta, which has a long history of snuffing out dissent, started cracking down Wednesday, when the first of at least 10 deaths was reported, and then let loose on Thursday, shooting protesters and clubbing them with batons.
Small groups of die-hard activists and angry residents have continued to turn out since then, some taunting troops and then scattering into alleyways, soldiers in pursuit.
"Bloodbath again! Bloodbath again!" a Yangon resident yelled Friday while watching troops break up one march by shooting into the air, firing tear gas and beating people with clubs. Participants in the protests asked that their names not be used, fearing retribution.
The mood in Yangon was somber Saturday. Soldiers and police were stationed on almost every street corner. Shopping malls, grocery stores and public parks were closed, and only a handful of residents ventured out.
"People are living in a state of fear and hate," said one onlooker, who asked not to be named. "A few days ago, everyone was friendly. Now no one wants to talk to strangers."
Hundreds of people have been arrested in the last few days, including Win Mya Mya, an outspoken member of the country's main opposition group, the National League for Democracy, who was taken overnight, according to family members.
Images of bloodied protesters and fleeing crowds have riveted world attention on the escalating crisis, prompting many governments to urge the junta to end the violence. A video broadcast by Japan's Fuji Television Network showed a soldier directly shooting a Japanese cameraman during the crackdown Thursday.
The UN special envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, was due to arrive in the country later Saturday to promote a political solution to the crisis. But Western diplomats were already complaining that Gambari's visit likely would not include senior members of the opposition or — apparently — the country's leader, Gen. Than Shwe.
The schedule was being set by the government.
The United States, meanwhile, urged "all civilized nations" to press Myanmar's leaders to end the crackdown.
"They don't want the world to see what is going on there," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said, as soldiers searched hotels for foreign journalists, who have been largely barred from entering the country.
But analysts said it was unlikely that countries with major investments in Myanmar, such as China and India, would agree to take any punitive measures. They also noted the junta has long ignored criticism of its tough handling of dissidents.
Although the crackdown raised fears of a repeat of a 1988 democracy uprising that saw an estimated 3,000 protesters slain, the junta appeared relatively restrained so far.
The arrival of additional troops in Yangon strengthened the government's hand, said an Asian diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing protocol. The corralling of monks — who carry high moral authority in the predominantly Buddhist nation — was also a serious blow.
Authorities also shut off the country's two Internet service providers, although big companies and embassies hooked up to the Web by satellite remained online. The Internet has played a crucial role in getting news and images of the democracy protests to residents and the outside world alike.
In Yangon, lines formed at stores for shortwave radios, with people eager to hear what was going on in their own country.
The government has put the official death toll from this week's violence at 10, but diplomats and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said many more may have died, citing unconfirmed witness reports.
The Associated Press | September 28, 2007
YANGON, Myanmar: Residents worried that pro-democracy protests could be weakening after soldiers and police in Myanmar took control of the streets, firing tear gas and warning shots to scatter demonstrators who ventured out and sealing off Buddhist monasteries.
The streets were quiet early Saturday and monks, who have provided the backbone of recent rallies calling for an end to 45 years of military rule, were locked behind temple gates in the two largest cities, Yangon and Mandalay. Additional troops arrived overnight, consolidating the government's control of urban areas.
Internet links have been cut.
"I don't think that we have any more hope to win," said a young woman who took part in a massive demonstration Thursday that was broken up when troops opened fire into a crowd. She was separated from her boyfriend and has not seen him since. "The monks are the ones who give us courage."
Daily protests drawing tens of thousands of people had grown into the stiffest challenge to the ruling military junta in two decades, a crisis that began more than a month ago when people in the desperately poor nation of 54 million started rallying against a massive fuel price increase. The demonstrations escalated when monks joined in.
The junta, which has a long history of snuffing out dissent, started cracking down Wednesday, when the first of at least 10 deaths was reported, and then let loose on Thursday, shooting protesters and clubbing them with batons.
Small groups of die-hard activists and angry residents have continued to turn out since then, some taunting troops and then scattering into alleyways, soldiers in pursuit.
"Bloodbath again! Bloodbath again!" a Yangon resident yelled Friday while watching troops break up one march by shooting into the air, firing tear gas and beating people with clubs. Participants in the protests asked that their names not be used, fearing retribution.
The mood in Yangon was somber Saturday. Soldiers and police were stationed on almost every street corner. Shopping malls, grocery stores and public parks were closed, and only a handful of residents ventured out.
"People are living in a state of fear and hate," said one onlooker, who asked not to be named. "A few days ago, everyone was friendly. Now no one wants to talk to strangers."
Hundreds of people have been arrested in the last few days, including Win Mya Mya, an outspoken member of the country's main opposition group, the National League for Democracy, who was taken overnight, according to family members.
Images of bloodied protesters and fleeing crowds have riveted world attention on the escalating crisis, prompting many governments to urge the junta to end the violence. A video broadcast by Japan's Fuji Television Network showed a soldier directly shooting a Japanese cameraman during the crackdown Thursday.
The UN special envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, was due to arrive in the country later Saturday to promote a political solution to the crisis. But Western diplomats were already complaining that Gambari's visit likely would not include senior members of the opposition or — apparently — the country's leader, Gen. Than Shwe.
The schedule was being set by the government.
The United States, meanwhile, urged "all civilized nations" to press Myanmar's leaders to end the crackdown.
"They don't want the world to see what is going on there," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said, as soldiers searched hotels for foreign journalists, who have been largely barred from entering the country.
But analysts said it was unlikely that countries with major investments in Myanmar, such as China and India, would agree to take any punitive measures. They also noted the junta has long ignored criticism of its tough handling of dissidents.
Although the crackdown raised fears of a repeat of a 1988 democracy uprising that saw an estimated 3,000 protesters slain, the junta appeared relatively restrained so far.
The arrival of additional troops in Yangon strengthened the government's hand, said an Asian diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing protocol. The corralling of monks — who carry high moral authority in the predominantly Buddhist nation — was also a serious blow.
Authorities also shut off the country's two Internet service providers, although big companies and embassies hooked up to the Web by satellite remained online. The Internet has played a crucial role in getting news and images of the democracy protests to residents and the outside world alike.
In Yangon, lines formed at stores for shortwave radios, with people eager to hear what was going on in their own country.
The government has put the official death toll from this week's violence at 10, but diplomats and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said many more may have died, citing unconfirmed witness reports.
WSJ : 'Citizen Journalists' Evade Blackout On Myanmar News
Friday, September 28, 2007
'Citizen Journalists' Evade Blackout On Myanmar News
Blogs and Shaky Videos Find Way Into Mainstream; Photo of Bloody Sandals
By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER | September 28, 2007
As Myanmar's regime cracks down on a growing protest movement, "citizen journalists" are breaking the news to the world.
At 1:30 yesterday afternoon, a cellphone buzzed with news for Soe Myint, the editor in chief of Mizzima News, a publication about Myanmar run by exiles in New Delhi.
[A video of the Myanmar protests on YouTube.]
A photo, provided by the National League for Democracy-Liberated Area, from Yangon, Myanmar, on Wednesday, the site of a protest crackdown.
The message: "There is a tourist shot down" in Yangon, the center of recent protests by Buddhist monks and others against the military junta in Myanmar, formerly Burma. Troops there were clearing the streets, telling protesters they had just minutes to go home -- or be shot.
The text message wasn't from one of Soe Myint's reporters. In fact, he doesn't know who sent the message. He believes it came from one of the more than 100 students, activists and ordinary citizens who have been feeding him reports, images and video of the violent events unfolding in recent days.
In the age of YouTube, cellphone cameras and text messaging, technology is playing a critical role in helping news organizations and international groups follow Myanmar's biggest protests in nearly two decades. Citizen witnesses are using cellphones and the Internet to beam out images of bloodied monks and street fires, subverting the Myanmar government's effort to control media coverage and present a sanitized version of the uprising. The Associated Press reported yesterday that soldiers in Yangon fired automatic weapons into a crowd of demonstrators as tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters converged in the capital. Wire services have reported the number of dead at nine, citing the state media. (See related article.)
MONITORING MYANMAR
[keyboard]
Here are some blogs and media outlets with video and pictures of the protests in Yangon. (Some are in Burmese.)
• Mizzima News
• The Irawaddy
• Democratic Voice of Burma
• Justice & Injustice
• http://soneseayar.blogspot.com/
• http://mmedwatch.blogspot.com/
• http://ko-htike.blogspot.com/
• http://mogokmedia.blogspot.com/
• Today Burma
VIDEO
• Jim Carrey's Youtube call to action
• Anti-march warning broadcast from Burmese state broadcaster MRTV, via BBC.
The BBC, which has a Burmese language Web site and radio service, is encouraging its audience to send in photos, like the ones it received of a monk's monastery that had been ransacked by authorities. A shaky video, now on YouTube, shows a sea of chanting and clapping monks draped in red robes marching down a street, past Buddhist monuments. One blog features a photo showing two abandoned, bloodstained sandals.
Another blog was updated at 3 p.m. Myanmar time yesterday with a few English lines: "Right now they're using fire engines and hitting people and dragging them onto E2000 trucks and most of them are girls and people are shouting." Below the post is a blurry photo of trucks with the caption, "This is how they come out and try to kill people."
Who produced these reports -- or how the information got out of Myanmar -- hasn't been established. But that's the point in a country where people caught protesting or writing against the government risk years in prison.
The last time there was a protest of this scale in Myanmar was 1988, when a pro-democracy uprising was crushed by the military and more than 3,000 people died. First reports of that event came from diplomats and official media. "Technology has changed everything," says Aung Zaw, a Myanmar exile whose Thailand publication Irrawaddy has been covering events in Burma hour-by-hour, with reports gathered online. "Now in a split second, you have the story," says the editor.
According to the AP, on Thursday Myanmar's state-run newspaper blamed the protests in Yangon, formerly called Rangoon, on "saboteurs inside and outside the nation." It also said that the demonstrations were much smaller than foreign media were reporting.
The events are a trial by fire for so-called citizen journalists, who cover events that professional journalists can't get to. The Myanmar government has successfully kept out many reporters, some of whom are filing their stories about events in Myanmar from India and Thailand.
The AP, Reuters and other media have been retransmitting photos and reports given to them by exile media organizations like Mizzima, Irrawaddy, and the Oslo-based Democratic Voice of Burma. Those outfits are acting as a clearinghouse for images and reports produced by people in Myanmar.
Time Warner Inc.'s CNN, which had its own reporter in Myanmar on Wednesday, has also been airing 65 clips and pictures from tourists and Myanmar residents sent in via its "ireport" citizen-journalist system.
"When traditional methods and professional journalists can't provide footage, and personal safety allows, citizens rise to the challenge time and again, often with remarkable material," said Ellana Lee, the managing editor of CNN Asia Pacific in an email. "Even in countries like Myanmar, the spread of the Internet and mobile phones has meant that footage will always continue to get through and the story will be told, one way or another."
Still, working with inexperienced journalists can be a challenge for news organizations that want to publish credible, balanced information. Reuters, which has a reporter stationed in Yangon, says content from citizen journalists is rigorously checked for accuracy.
Speaking of his correspondents, Aung Zaw, the editor of Irrawaddy, says, "They are doing their job on the ground, and nobody is even giving them the assignment. It is our job to check again with our sources, to see how close to the truth it is."
For example, he says his staff had a long discussion on Wednesday night about how many deaths had occurred during that day's bloody protests. The government was reporting one death, but his sources were saying possibly three, six or seven people died. In the end, after counting known specific cases, Irrawaddy made the "very difficult call" to say there were six deaths, says Aung Zaw. "We also said this number couldn't be confirmed."
After Mizzima's Soe Myint received his text message about Thursday's tourist shooting, he asked one of the 10 reporters who work for him in Myanmar to verify the claim. An hour and a half after the initial report, Mizzima reported on its Web site that a 30-year old foreigner was injured in gunfire, and that an American flag was found with his bag. Security people also seized his video camera, the report said.
Soe Myint says his grassroots reporting system is in place because his organization has been building a base of supporters in the country for years: "This is not the work of one day. We have been getting ready for this for the last nine years. People know our work and how to reach us."
The safety of everyone trying to report from Myanmar now is cause for concern. Yesterday, a Japanese photojournalist was killed, and another foreign reporter was injured, according to reports. State media yesterday reported 11 people were injured in Yangon on Thursday, but it didn't specify who they were.
One blogger dubbed "Moezack," whose photos and descriptions of the protests -- sometimes posted minutes after events occurred -- were picked up by the international press, had stopped blogging. His "Today Burma" blog is currently empty, and his whereabouts are unknown to several international groups, though he might be blogging under another name.
The Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders says that many of the people sending reports out of Yangon are former journalists and activists, some of whom have at some point been jailed for their work. "They do it because they are part of the struggle," says the group's Asia program director, Vincent Brossel.
Myanmar is hardly a technological hub. Cellphones are expensive, and the Internet penetration rate is less than 1%. Even before the recent clash, the government has taken serious steps to censor Internet content, blocking access to popular foreign news and email services. A 2005 report by the Open Net Initiative, run out of several universities, said that Myanmar's State Peace and Development Council has implemented "one of the world's most restrictive regimes of Internet control."
Yet activists and students in Burma have become particularly skilled at using technological tricks to bypass those restrictions -- some of them borrowed from China, where the government also censors the Internet. These include using proxies, which create a hole in the censorship network by connecting directly to one computer outside the country.
Reporters Without Borders says that at 3 p.m. yesterday, authorities disconnected most of the country's cellphone lines, preventing journalists and demonstrators from reporting on events. Authorities have also closed some Internet cafes in Yangon, effectively shutting down many blogs and Web sites.
The Internet has slowed so that it has been difficult to send out photographs and video. It took several hours for pictures to emerge of Wednesday's shootings, says Mr. Brossel.
So now groups determined to get news out are turning to costly but independent satellite phones, which can't as easily be monitored by the government.
Irrawaddy's Aung Zaw remains confident. "The more they try to suppress information, the more will come out."
Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com
Blogs and Shaky Videos Find Way Into Mainstream; Photo of Bloody Sandals
By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER | September 28, 2007
As Myanmar's regime cracks down on a growing protest movement, "citizen journalists" are breaking the news to the world.
At 1:30 yesterday afternoon, a cellphone buzzed with news for Soe Myint, the editor in chief of Mizzima News, a publication about Myanmar run by exiles in New Delhi.
[A video of the Myanmar protests on YouTube.]
A photo, provided by the National League for Democracy-Liberated Area, from Yangon, Myanmar, on Wednesday, the site of a protest crackdown.
The message: "There is a tourist shot down" in Yangon, the center of recent protests by Buddhist monks and others against the military junta in Myanmar, formerly Burma. Troops there were clearing the streets, telling protesters they had just minutes to go home -- or be shot.
The text message wasn't from one of Soe Myint's reporters. In fact, he doesn't know who sent the message. He believes it came from one of the more than 100 students, activists and ordinary citizens who have been feeding him reports, images and video of the violent events unfolding in recent days.
In the age of YouTube, cellphone cameras and text messaging, technology is playing a critical role in helping news organizations and international groups follow Myanmar's biggest protests in nearly two decades. Citizen witnesses are using cellphones and the Internet to beam out images of bloodied monks and street fires, subverting the Myanmar government's effort to control media coverage and present a sanitized version of the uprising. The Associated Press reported yesterday that soldiers in Yangon fired automatic weapons into a crowd of demonstrators as tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters converged in the capital. Wire services have reported the number of dead at nine, citing the state media. (See related article.)
MONITORING MYANMAR
[keyboard]
Here are some blogs and media outlets with video and pictures of the protests in Yangon. (Some are in Burmese.)
• Mizzima News
• The Irawaddy
• Democratic Voice of Burma
• Justice & Injustice
• http://soneseayar.blogspot.com/
• http://mmedwatch.blogspot.com/
• http://ko-htike.blogspot.com/
• http://mogokmedia.blogspot.com/
• Today Burma
VIDEO
• Jim Carrey's Youtube call to action
• Anti-march warning broadcast from Burmese state broadcaster MRTV, via BBC.
The BBC, which has a Burmese language Web site and radio service, is encouraging its audience to send in photos, like the ones it received of a monk's monastery that had been ransacked by authorities. A shaky video, now on YouTube, shows a sea of chanting and clapping monks draped in red robes marching down a street, past Buddhist monuments. One blog features a photo showing two abandoned, bloodstained sandals.
Another blog was updated at 3 p.m. Myanmar time yesterday with a few English lines: "Right now they're using fire engines and hitting people and dragging them onto E2000 trucks and most of them are girls and people are shouting." Below the post is a blurry photo of trucks with the caption, "This is how they come out and try to kill people."
Who produced these reports -- or how the information got out of Myanmar -- hasn't been established. But that's the point in a country where people caught protesting or writing against the government risk years in prison.
The last time there was a protest of this scale in Myanmar was 1988, when a pro-democracy uprising was crushed by the military and more than 3,000 people died. First reports of that event came from diplomats and official media. "Technology has changed everything," says Aung Zaw, a Myanmar exile whose Thailand publication Irrawaddy has been covering events in Burma hour-by-hour, with reports gathered online. "Now in a split second, you have the story," says the editor.
According to the AP, on Thursday Myanmar's state-run newspaper blamed the protests in Yangon, formerly called Rangoon, on "saboteurs inside and outside the nation." It also said that the demonstrations were much smaller than foreign media were reporting.
The events are a trial by fire for so-called citizen journalists, who cover events that professional journalists can't get to. The Myanmar government has successfully kept out many reporters, some of whom are filing their stories about events in Myanmar from India and Thailand.
The AP, Reuters and other media have been retransmitting photos and reports given to them by exile media organizations like Mizzima, Irrawaddy, and the Oslo-based Democratic Voice of Burma. Those outfits are acting as a clearinghouse for images and reports produced by people in Myanmar.
Time Warner Inc.'s CNN, which had its own reporter in Myanmar on Wednesday, has also been airing 65 clips and pictures from tourists and Myanmar residents sent in via its "ireport" citizen-journalist system.
"When traditional methods and professional journalists can't provide footage, and personal safety allows, citizens rise to the challenge time and again, often with remarkable material," said Ellana Lee, the managing editor of CNN Asia Pacific in an email. "Even in countries like Myanmar, the spread of the Internet and mobile phones has meant that footage will always continue to get through and the story will be told, one way or another."
Still, working with inexperienced journalists can be a challenge for news organizations that want to publish credible, balanced information. Reuters, which has a reporter stationed in Yangon, says content from citizen journalists is rigorously checked for accuracy.
Speaking of his correspondents, Aung Zaw, the editor of Irrawaddy, says, "They are doing their job on the ground, and nobody is even giving them the assignment. It is our job to check again with our sources, to see how close to the truth it is."
For example, he says his staff had a long discussion on Wednesday night about how many deaths had occurred during that day's bloody protests. The government was reporting one death, but his sources were saying possibly three, six or seven people died. In the end, after counting known specific cases, Irrawaddy made the "very difficult call" to say there were six deaths, says Aung Zaw. "We also said this number couldn't be confirmed."
After Mizzima's Soe Myint received his text message about Thursday's tourist shooting, he asked one of the 10 reporters who work for him in Myanmar to verify the claim. An hour and a half after the initial report, Mizzima reported on its Web site that a 30-year old foreigner was injured in gunfire, and that an American flag was found with his bag. Security people also seized his video camera, the report said.
Soe Myint says his grassroots reporting system is in place because his organization has been building a base of supporters in the country for years: "This is not the work of one day. We have been getting ready for this for the last nine years. People know our work and how to reach us."
The safety of everyone trying to report from Myanmar now is cause for concern. Yesterday, a Japanese photojournalist was killed, and another foreign reporter was injured, according to reports. State media yesterday reported 11 people were injured in Yangon on Thursday, but it didn't specify who they were.
One blogger dubbed "Moezack," whose photos and descriptions of the protests -- sometimes posted minutes after events occurred -- were picked up by the international press, had stopped blogging. His "Today Burma" blog is currently empty, and his whereabouts are unknown to several international groups, though he might be blogging under another name.
The Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders says that many of the people sending reports out of Yangon are former journalists and activists, some of whom have at some point been jailed for their work. "They do it because they are part of the struggle," says the group's Asia program director, Vincent Brossel.
Myanmar is hardly a technological hub. Cellphones are expensive, and the Internet penetration rate is less than 1%. Even before the recent clash, the government has taken serious steps to censor Internet content, blocking access to popular foreign news and email services. A 2005 report by the Open Net Initiative, run out of several universities, said that Myanmar's State Peace and Development Council has implemented "one of the world's most restrictive regimes of Internet control."
Yet activists and students in Burma have become particularly skilled at using technological tricks to bypass those restrictions -- some of them borrowed from China, where the government also censors the Internet. These include using proxies, which create a hole in the censorship network by connecting directly to one computer outside the country.
Reporters Without Borders says that at 3 p.m. yesterday, authorities disconnected most of the country's cellphone lines, preventing journalists and demonstrators from reporting on events. Authorities have also closed some Internet cafes in Yangon, effectively shutting down many blogs and Web sites.
The Internet has slowed so that it has been difficult to send out photographs and video. It took several hours for pictures to emerge of Wednesday's shootings, says Mr. Brossel.
So now groups determined to get news out are turning to costly but independent satellite phones, which can't as easily be monitored by the government.
Irrawaddy's Aung Zaw remains confident. "The more they try to suppress information, the more will come out."
Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com
Reuters : Myanmar troops open fire on protesters, 9 dead
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Myanmar troops open fire on protesters, 9 dead
By Aung Hla Tun | September 27, 2007
YANGON (Reuters) - Troops cleared protesters from the streets of central Yangon on Thursday, giving them 10 minutes to leave or be shot as the Myanmar junta intensified a two-day crackdown on the largest uprising in 20 years.
At least nine people were killed, state television said, on a day when far fewer protesters took to the streets after soldiers raided monasteries in the middle of the night and rounded up hundreds of the monks who had been leading them.
One of dead was a Japanese photographer, shot when soldiers cleared the area near Sule Pagoda -- a city-centre focus of the protests -- as loudspeakers blared out warnings, ominous reminders of the ruthless crushing of a 1988 uprising.
About 200 soldiers marched towards the crowd and riot police clattered their rattan shields with wooden batons.
"It's a terrifying noise," one witness said.
The army, which killed an estimated 3,000 people in 1988, moved in after 1,000 chanting protesters hurled stones and water bottles at troops, prompting a police charge in which shots were fired and the Japanese went down.
Soldiers shot dead three more people in a subsequent protest outside the city's heart as crowds regrouped and taunted troops. Their bodies were tossed in a ditch as troops chased fleeing people, beating anybody they could catch, witnesses said.
Another Buddhist monk -- adding to the five reported killed on Wednesday when security forces tried to disperse huge crowds protesting against 45 years of military rule -- was killed during the midnight raids on monasteries, witnesses said.
Monks were kicked and beaten as soldiers rounded them up and shoved them onto trucks. Some of the monasteries were emptied of all but the very old and sick, people living nearby said.
The raids were likely to anger Myanmar's 56 million people, whose steadily declining living conditions took a turn for the worse last month when the junta imposed swinging fuel price rises, the spark for the initial, small protests.
"Doors of the monasteries were broken, things were ransacked and taken away," a witness said. "It's like a living hell seeing the monasteries raided and the monks treated cruelly."
After darkness fell and curfew hour loomed, sporadic bursts of automatic rifle fire echoed over the city of five million people.
MONKHOOD VERSUS MILITARY
Elsewhere in the former Burma, the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission said it had received reports of a big demonstration in the northwest coastal town of Sittwe, as well as incidents in Pakokku, Mandalay and Moulmein.
Details were sketchy.
It was unclear whether the protests in Yangon would regain momentum in the absence of the clergy, whose marches drew large numbers into what has become a head-on collision between the moral authority of the monks and the military machine.
The junta, the latest incarnation of a series of military regimes, sent in the troops despite desperate international calls for restraint.
It told diplomats summoned to its new jungle capital, Naypyidaw, "the government was committed to showing restraint in its response to the provocations", one of those present said.
But international anger mounted sharply, despite the junta's long track record of ignoring the outside world. The generals have managed to live with tough sanctions from the United States and lesser ones from Europe for a decade.
Even China, the closest the isolated junta has to a friend, said it was "extremely concerned about the situation in Myanmar". The Foreign Ministry urged all parties to "maintain restraint and appropriately handle the problems that have arisen".
The White House demanded an end to the crackdown, and the European Union said it was looking urgently into reinforcing sanctions in response to the crackdown, which has already drawn more sanctions from the United States.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called it a "tragedy" and urged the generals to allow a U.N. envoy to visit and meet detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
"The regime has reacted brutally to people who were simply protesting peacefully," Rice said during the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he would dispatch special envoy Ibrahim Gambari to Southeast Asia in the hope the generals would let him in. U.N. sources said Gambari was heading to Singapore to try to get a visa.
However, in a sign of rifts within the international community at an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting, China ruled out sanctions or an official condemnation of the use of force.
© Reuters 2007 All rights reserved
By Aung Hla Tun | September 27, 2007
YANGON (Reuters) - Troops cleared protesters from the streets of central Yangon on Thursday, giving them 10 minutes to leave or be shot as the Myanmar junta intensified a two-day crackdown on the largest uprising in 20 years.
At least nine people were killed, state television said, on a day when far fewer protesters took to the streets after soldiers raided monasteries in the middle of the night and rounded up hundreds of the monks who had been leading them.
One of dead was a Japanese photographer, shot when soldiers cleared the area near Sule Pagoda -- a city-centre focus of the protests -- as loudspeakers blared out warnings, ominous reminders of the ruthless crushing of a 1988 uprising.
About 200 soldiers marched towards the crowd and riot police clattered their rattan shields with wooden batons.
"It's a terrifying noise," one witness said.
The army, which killed an estimated 3,000 people in 1988, moved in after 1,000 chanting protesters hurled stones and water bottles at troops, prompting a police charge in which shots were fired and the Japanese went down.
Soldiers shot dead three more people in a subsequent protest outside the city's heart as crowds regrouped and taunted troops. Their bodies were tossed in a ditch as troops chased fleeing people, beating anybody they could catch, witnesses said.
Another Buddhist monk -- adding to the five reported killed on Wednesday when security forces tried to disperse huge crowds protesting against 45 years of military rule -- was killed during the midnight raids on monasteries, witnesses said.
Monks were kicked and beaten as soldiers rounded them up and shoved them onto trucks. Some of the monasteries were emptied of all but the very old and sick, people living nearby said.
The raids were likely to anger Myanmar's 56 million people, whose steadily declining living conditions took a turn for the worse last month when the junta imposed swinging fuel price rises, the spark for the initial, small protests.
"Doors of the monasteries were broken, things were ransacked and taken away," a witness said. "It's like a living hell seeing the monasteries raided and the monks treated cruelly."
After darkness fell and curfew hour loomed, sporadic bursts of automatic rifle fire echoed over the city of five million people.
MONKHOOD VERSUS MILITARY
Elsewhere in the former Burma, the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission said it had received reports of a big demonstration in the northwest coastal town of Sittwe, as well as incidents in Pakokku, Mandalay and Moulmein.
Details were sketchy.
It was unclear whether the protests in Yangon would regain momentum in the absence of the clergy, whose marches drew large numbers into what has become a head-on collision between the moral authority of the monks and the military machine.
The junta, the latest incarnation of a series of military regimes, sent in the troops despite desperate international calls for restraint.
It told diplomats summoned to its new jungle capital, Naypyidaw, "the government was committed to showing restraint in its response to the provocations", one of those present said.
But international anger mounted sharply, despite the junta's long track record of ignoring the outside world. The generals have managed to live with tough sanctions from the United States and lesser ones from Europe for a decade.
Even China, the closest the isolated junta has to a friend, said it was "extremely concerned about the situation in Myanmar". The Foreign Ministry urged all parties to "maintain restraint and appropriately handle the problems that have arisen".
The White House demanded an end to the crackdown, and the European Union said it was looking urgently into reinforcing sanctions in response to the crackdown, which has already drawn more sanctions from the United States.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called it a "tragedy" and urged the generals to allow a U.N. envoy to visit and meet detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
"The regime has reacted brutally to people who were simply protesting peacefully," Rice said during the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he would dispatch special envoy Ibrahim Gambari to Southeast Asia in the hope the generals would let him in. U.N. sources said Gambari was heading to Singapore to try to get a visa.
However, in a sign of rifts within the international community at an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting, China ruled out sanctions or an official condemnation of the use of force.
© Reuters 2007 All rights reserved
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
