Three Killed As Myanmar Troops Battle Protests
YANGON - Seething crowds of Buddhist monks and civilians filled the streets of Myanmar’s main city on Wednesday, defying warning shots, tear gas and baton charges meant to quell the biggest anti-junta protests in 20 years.
Two monks and a civilian were killed, hospital and monastery sources said, as decades of pent-up frustration at 45 years of unbroken military rule in the former Burma produced the largest crowds yet during a month of protests.
Some witnesses estimated 100,000 people took to the streets on Wednesday despite fears of a repeat of the ruthless suppression of Myanmar’s last major uprising, in 1988, when soldiers opened fire, killing an estimated 3,000 people.
“They are marching down the streets, with the monks in the middle and ordinary people either side. They are shielding them, forming a human chain,” one witness said over almost deafening roars of anger at security forces.
As darkness fell, however, people dispersed ahead of a dusk-to-dawn curfew. The streets were almost deserted.
In the second city of Mandalay, also under curfew, the Asian Human Rights Commission said there was no opposition to 10,000 protesting against grinding poverty. Five decades ago, the country was regarded as one of Asia’s brightest prospects. Now it is one of its most desperate.
In the northwest coastal town of Sittwe, which has seen some of the biggest crowds outside Yangon, residents said 10,000 took to the streets on Wednesday, the Buddhist holy day.
World leaders again appealed again to the junta to exercise restraint over the protests that started against fuel prices rises last month and erupted into a major revolt after soldiers fired shots over monks in the town of Pakokku on September 5.
Commenting on reports of deaths, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said: “If these stories are accurate, the U.S. is very troubled that the regime would treat the Burmese people this way.”
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for an immediate U.N. Security Council meeting, vowing “no impunity” for human rights violators in the country, while Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said he would ask the European Union to hold an urgent meeting to seek ways to “halt the violence”.
Singapore also called for restraint. The city state is current chairman of a Southeast Asian grouping that is one of the few such bodies to have isolated Myanmar as a member.
In neighboring Thailand, the army was preparing C-130 planes to airlift its citizens from Yangon if the violence escalated, and troops on the border were braced for a flood of refugees.
MONKS ARRESTED
In the afternoon, riot police fired tear gas at columns of monks trying to push their way past barricades sealing off the Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar’s holiest shrine and the starting point of more than a week of marches.
“We cannot know if many people were injured but we can be sure that blood was spilled,” French diplomat Emmanuel Mouriez, who is stationed in Myanmar, told French radio RTL.
“We have several witnesses who speak of people on the floor. There were some monks who were beaten up.”
As many as 200 maroon-robed monks were arrested at the gilded shrine as the Buddhist priesthood, the country’s highest moral authority, went head-to-head with the might of the military.
“This is a test of wills between the only two institutions in the country that have enough power to mobilize nationally,” said Bradley Babson, a retired World Bank official who worked in Myanmar.
“Between those two institutions, one of them will crack,” he said. “If they take overt violence against the monks, they risk igniting the population against them.”
The junta, whose leaders remain hunkered down in a new capital 250 miles to the north, had tried to keep the monks off the streets, sending trucks of soldiers and police to block six activist monasteries early in the morning.
The generals also rounded up more prominent dissidents, including comedian Za Ga Na, who had urged people to take to the streets.
Ranks of riot police remained outside the lakeside home of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to ensure no attempt was made to pluck the 62-year-old Nobel laureate from house arrest.
China, the closest the junta has to a friend, has been making an effort recently to let the generals know how worried the international community is, a Beijing-based diplomat said, although it has refrained from public pressure.
Representatives of Myanmar’s pro-democracy and ethnic groups told Reuters Chinese officials had been meeting quietly with them behind the scenes for months, partly hedging their bets in their resource-rich neighbor.
(Additional reporting by Darren Schuettler in Bangkok)
© 2007 Reuters
Seething crowds? Troops battling protesters?
Who wrote those headlines?
Seems that the seething crowds were monks that were chanting and walking and civilians surrounding them, and the only people battling were the troops.
I imagine the next step will be for der Bush to send “humanitarian aid” to the poor generals who are being so cruelly assaulted by Buddhist monks and poor people.
I’m sure they would like shipments of cluster weapons, napalm and a few hundred thousand missing automatic weapons before they are overwhelmed by prayer.
Would they miss such an opportunity?
good idea libertas fugit, perhaps congress should hold a vote to renounce the civil disobedience there as well?
Now why, (we might ask ourselves) are George W. Zombie and the UK’s hew leader Gorgon Brown suddenly *so* very passionate and vociferous regarding Burma?
Could it be that they (-overnight!) have suddenly developed a severe case of moral outrage and philanthropic insight?
…er… I think not!
It’s “same as it ever was” !!
As far as I am aware, Burma has vast reserves of OIL, and gas, and methinks Gorgon Brown is, (like his predecessor Tony Bliar) just ‘towing the Bushbaby line’ on this issue.
And, what could be more bizarre than Bush & Brown condemning the Burmese authorities for their ‘human rights abuses’, - when they themselves are engaged in macerating Iraqi lives in a blood-flood fest, ~on a daily / hourly basis ???
1. Bedlam, is where loonies lay, and say the most outrageous things.
2. But stranger yet, is when these crazed degenerates are given the slightest shred of credence…
Maybe read this fairly typical comment from suffering Burmese brothers: http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/burma/
-and here’s a bit about Burmese oil, http://burma.total.com/en/contexte/p_1_2.htm
-And worth mentioning is the Chinese interest in Burma’s oil, which I believe is what those mendacious Bush & Brown clowns are all about: – ensuring THEY get the monopoly on oil before the Chinese do…
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Cleaning tips:
When cleaning a pool, often the scum and muck which has floated to the top first needs cleaning away, before the more wholesome body of water can be used.
Methinks we need to clean away the detritus which sullies our pool (-at ‘the top’), prior to regaining a measure of healthy water to swim in…
Where was the West’s outrage when Unocal built a pipeline through Burma with slave labor? Looks like France is also heavily vested.
Apparently the companies had hired the Burmese military to provide some security on the project also: http://www.hri.ca/partners/cfob/Campaigns/OilGas/OilGasinvest.shtml
Looks like the entire question may be moot. The senate just voted in the Lieberman-Kye amendment 76-22 for Bush to use whatever means necessary (including force) to bring Iran to heel.
WW-III here we come. About the lnly hope we have now is for the military to refuse to go in, and how likely is that?
Dam, where’s Black Water when you need’em. They would teach those bad old monks. What the world needs is a universal mercenary pool of private killers, that way there would be a sufficiet supply of killers to go around just incase the marching monk movement gets out of hand and they are declared terrorist. Maybe Bush can spare a few from Iraq. After all, Bush claims thing are a lot better there now. Humm, monks in Guatanamo.
The Chinese will decide what happens in Burma.
No amount of hatred, greed or delusion will still this army of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s.
When people cease believing in militarism as the answer in solving problems, peace on earth and the real brotherhood of man will begin. Stop glorifying armed forces and the phony macho man image.
At least the Buddhist monks practice what they teach. Remember when Tibetan monks were killed and tortured by the Chinese communists?
The military junta in Myanmar/Burma just started bombing the Buhddist temples.
The Bush administration will be watching the situation in Myanmar very closely. Bush and Cheney are looking for pointers in controlling unruly crowds just in case the American people get uppity when they shred the remaining provisions of the Constitution.
Galen,
They have to teach those monk bastards to stop disrespecting the troops!