Only Now, The Full Horror of Burmese Junta’s Repression of Monks Emerges
Monks confined in a room with their own excrement for days, people beaten just for being bystanders at a demonstration, a young woman too traumatised to speak, and screams in the night as Rangoon’s residents hear their neighbours being taken away.
Harrowing accounts smuggled out of Burma reveal how a systematic campaign of physical punishment and psychological terror is being waged by the Burmese security forces as they take revenge on those suspected of involvement in last month’s pro-democracy uprising.
The first-hand accounts describe a campaign hidden from view, but even more sinister and terrifying than the open crackdown in which the regime’s soldiers turned their bullets and batons on unarmed demonstrators in the streets of Rangoon, killing at least 13. At least then, the world was watching.
The hidden crackdown is as methodical as it is brutal. First the monks were targeted, then the thousands of ordinary Burmese who joined the demonstrations, those who even applauded or watched, or those merely suspected of anti-government sympathies.
“There were about 400 of us in one room. No toilets, no buckets, no water for washing. No beds, no blankets, no soap. Nothing,” said a 24-year-old monk who was held for 10 days at the Government Technical Institute, a leafy college in northern Rangoon which is now a prison camp for suspected dissidents. The young man, too frightened to be named, was one of 185 monks taken in a raid on a monastery in the Yankin district of Rangoon on 28 September, two days after government soldiers began attacking street protesters.
“The room was too small for everyone to lie down at once. We took it in turns to sleep. Every night at 8 o’clock we were given a small bowl of rice and a cup of water. But after a few days many of us just couldn’t eat. The smell was so bad.
“Some of the novice monks were under 10 years old, the youngest was just seven. They were stripped of their robes and given prison sarongs. Some were beaten, leaving open, untreated wounds, but no doctors came.”
On his release, the monk spoke to a Western aid worker in Rangoon, who smuggled his testimony and those of other prisoners and witnesses out of Burma on a small memory stick.
Most of the detained monks, the low-level clergy, were eventually freed without charge as were the children among them. But suspected ringleaders of the protests can expect much harsher treatment, secret trials and long prison sentences. One detained opposition leader has been tortured to death, activist groups said yesterday. Win Shwe, 42, a member of the National League for Democracy, the party of the detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, has died under interrogation, the Thai-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said, adding that the information came from authorities in Kyaukpandawn township. “However, his body was not sent to his family and the interrogators indicated that they had cremated it instead.” Win Shwe was arrested on the first day of the crackdown.
It was the russet-robed Buddhist clergy, not political groups, who had formed the backbone of demonstrations during days of euphoric defiance and previously undreamed-of hope that Burma’s military regime could be brought down by peaceful revolution. That hope has been crushed under the boots of government soldiers and intelligence agents and replaced by fear and dread.
A young woman, a domestic worker in Rangoon, described how one woman bystander who applauded the monks was rounded up. “My friend was taken away for clapping during the demonstrations. She had not marched. She came out of her house as the marchers went by and, for perhaps 30 seconds, smiled and clapped as the monks chanted. Her face was recorded on a military intelligence camera. She was taken and beaten. Now she is so scared she won’t even leave her room to come and talk to me, to anyone.”
Another Rangoon resident told the aid worker: “We all hear screams at night as they [the police] arrive to drag off a neighbour. We are torn between going to help them and hiding behind our doors. We hide behind our doors. We are ashamed. We are frightened.”
Burmese intelligence agents are scrutinising photographs and video footage to identify demonstrators and bystanders. They have also arrested the owners of computers which they suspect were used to transmit images and testimonies out of the country. For each story smuggled out to The Independent, someone has risked arrest and imprisonment.
Hein Zay Kyaw (not his real name) received a telephone call last week telling him to be at a government compound where the military were releasing 42 people, among them Mr Kyaw’s friend, missing since he was plucked from the edge of a demonstration on 26 September. Mr Kyaw told the aid worker: “The prisoners were let out of the trucks. Even though now they were safe, they were still so scared. They walked with their hands shielding their faces as if they were expecting blows. They were lined up in rows and sat down against the wall, still cowering. Their clothes were dirty, some stained with blood. Our friend had a clean T-shirt on. We were relieved because we thought this meant that he had not been beaten. We were wrong. He had been beaten on the head and the blood had soaked his shirt which he carried in a plastic bag.”
The United States yesterday threatened unspecified new sanctions against Burma and called for an investigation into the death of Win Shwe.
White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in a statement: “The junta must stop the brutal treatment of its people and peacefully transition to democracy or face new sanctions from the United States.”
The scale of the crackdown remains undocumented. The regime has banned journalists from entering Burma and has blocked internet access and phone lines.
Mark Farmaner of the Burma Campaign UK says the number of dead is possibly in the hundreds. “The regime covers up its atrocities. We will never know the true numbers,” he said.
At the weekend the government said it has released more than half of the 2,171 people arrested, but exile groups estimate the number of detentions between 6,000 and 10,000.
In Rangoon, people say they are more frightened now than when soldiers were shooting on the streets.
“When there were demonstrations and soldiers on the streets, the world was watching,” said a professional woman who watched the marchers from her office.
“But now the soldiers only come at night. They take anyone they can identify from their videos. People who clapped, who offered water to the monks, who knelt and prayed as they passed. People who happened to turn and watch as they passed by and their faces were caught on film. It is now we are most fearful. It is now we need the world to help us.”
© 2007 The Independent
All the digusting tyrants in charge of nations all over the world must be forced out. The time has come for the people to seize power.
‘Power to the people’ is much more than an old radical phrase from the sixties. Power rightfully belongs to the people, and into our hands it must and will be moved.
——————
“I swear by the God of my parents, I swear by my nation,
I swear by my honor that I will not allow my soul to rest,
nor my arm to relax until I have broken the chains
that oppress my people through the will of the powerful.
Free elections, free land and free men, horror to the oligarchy.”
Oath used by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez - the Great,
(when he was 28) and some of his revolutionary friends.
-copied from Page 80, !HUGO! by Bart Jones
White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in a statement: “The junta must stop the brutal treatment of its people and peacefully transition to democracy or face new sanctions from the United States.”
Most of us seem to be aware that the supposed government of this country has completely lost its way ie whatever vague “moral” authority it may have had. Protestations are already loaded with hypocrisy, considering the continuing support of military dictators everywhere, and the refusal to recognize freely elected democratic leaders like Chavez of course, and the continuation of establishing puppet regimes in occupied territories, which supposedly aren’t occupied territories.
but this protestation has a kind of perverse sci-fi irony, even though yes “this brutal treatment” of the should end. In the same way that the US protests the legitimacy of elections elsewhere and then freely holds illegitimate elections here, you can see the day coming in the not too distant future when similar oppressive measures will be applied here should the separation between the people and the ruling elite continue to decline at the current pace.
God only hope that the people will be able to rescue the planet in a way that these people cannot. Perhaps that’s too much to ask?
What the hell did our embassy folk do? Twiddle their thumbs? Take photos? Support the local military? We know what they did. Nothing! We have all the satellites and info we need to know whats going on. This government should have gone to Burma if it is interested on forcing democracy down others throats. What no oil? What no mention of all the dead in the jungle in this article? I want to see the satellite photos of all the dead that our government is hiding. We have helped instigate this action by turning our eyes and by example due to our gross actions in Iraq. No respect for life. We need a regime change at home I think.
The US is only going to give “lip service” about the Junta crackdown because Chevron supplies them with most of their money. It would economically “bad” if Chevron were to lose some of their profits.
EarthRights International has an excellent article on Chevron and other coporations doing business in Burma. They are working hard to make corporations accountable. They even sued Unocal over their business practices in Burma. They also have a letter to Chevron’s CEO, David O’Reilly, which you can sign. It may not be much, but it is one more step beyond talking about it.
http://www.earthrights.org/home.html
“power to the people”? who is doing this? aliens? human history is full of the cyclical rise and fall of various groups of people who identify and enforce who is in “power” and who is not… be they juntas, tribes, kingdoms, empires, states, nations, religions, regimes, races, corporations, fraternities, cartels or whatever other semantic classifications we use to name the separations we create between ourselves. the way people usually achieve and maintain “power” is through violence and exploitation, and over the ages, we have become quite adept at it. people have the power. if this regime holds its power by and for oil money, then we are all guilty of supporting it with at least a part of almost every dollar we spend, not even including the ways our taxes are spent. the concept of “power to the people” is a nice idea, but it also sustains an “us vs them” mentality that says that whoever “they” are who hold the power, they are not “the people”, which as i see it, is folly and allows for a sense of denial about what human nature is really capable of, either for good or bad.
Please try to pass one of these links around:
http://www.boycottbeijing4burma.com/
or
http://www.bb4b.org/
Thanks
I wonder what would happen if all the Catholic nuns and monks would demonstrate in D.C. demanding immediate withdrawal of our troops in Iraq and/or destruction of all our WMDs?
Perhaps the Pope would send in the Swiss Guards to protect them when the government started rounding them up and disappearing them. Then again, perhaps not.
The American Govt litmus test of whether or not a regime is “evil enough”.
Can we do business with them?
The Irrawaddy October 10, 2007 Protest News ..
“Hopefully this [international attention] will help mobilize pressure not only from the United States but from all the countries in the region… push it and push it and push it some more “— Shari Villarosa, the top US diplomat in Burma
The Irrawaddy is published by the Irrawaddy Publishing Group (IPG). IPG was established in 1992 by Burmese citizens living in exile and is not affiliated with any political party or organization. The Irrawaddy seeks to promote press freedom and access to unbiased information.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/
Thus the duplicity from the White House when we hear Bush and his wife say they support democracy in Burma. The corporations dictate the policies and Bush is their enabler. What better way to bleed a country and its people than to rule with a dictatorship. Remember Bush musing out loud, “It would be easier if I were a dictator.” He must look with envy at how they quell dissent in Burma, though he should be pretty smug here since they have done it under the radar. Voracious China too is complicit since they import the resources from Burma for their own, new capitalistic bohemoth.
america genocided the buddists of viet nam.american christianity has given jesus a bloody nose and a shady reputation.the buddist doctrine,of love and nonviolence is the purist threat to any evil new world order and it is akin to all those things the real jesus,taught.god bless the brave monks of burma,may their sacrifice,not be in vain !!the doctrine is the only hope left for a peaceful world….
SURPRISE SURPRISE
Richard cheney as ceo of halliburton
largely responsible for perpetuation of
repression of civil rights in burma. Deals
with unocal (now chevron)
Burma’s government kills, tortures and burns it’s religious leaders, and it’s the leaders of it’s predominant religion.
Here in the US, religious leaders whine and cry if they can’t plant their dogma, cast in stone, on the courthouse lawn.
Now what’s this about separation of church and state?
benningwentworth….imagine that !
It would be nice if the U.S. did something stronger than threaten sanctions but the reality is that the two countries that have the power to affect change in Burma are India and China. And China’s history of oppressing its internal opponents means that they don’t really see anything wrong with what the Burmese government is doing.
That’s why the movement to boycott the Beijing Olympics is so important. China is, after all, very anxious to look good with the Olympics. If we succeed in making the link between their support of the Burmese government and our movement to boycott the Olympics, they might, just might, force the Burmese government to stop the killing, torture and repression of its own people.
What’s happening in Burma is truly horrific. However Laura and George are simply trying to divert attention from Iraq. There is nothing we can do about Burma except to contribute to various humane NGOs. But we can’t take our eyes off the ball. Let’s talk about fixing Burma AFTER we immediately withdraw from Iraq in a manner wholly safe for our troops and end the talk about attacking Iran.
Nonamnesiac, you have it right. We in the US need to take care of our government’s crimes first. I agree with the emerging UN doctrine of the “responsibility to protect” applied, for example to Burma. But the US government and its lawless hypocrisy make our government, in the eyes of most of the world, unable to point the finger elsewhere while it commits crimes here and there. Our nation need a benevolent policy and the rule of law (applied to us) in international affairs.
the story is the share holders of Chevron, they must feel real proud of their investment now.with all that blood on their stocks they should feel real good as they sit on their boats airplanes resturants ect, realizing they are sucking the blood of those who lives were destroyed and rescources stolen so thyey can have a little comfort,. it is time for the labor of the world to ressert itself, for with out labor there is no asset.
U.N. council deplores crushing of Myanmar protests
Thu Oct 11, 2007 8:09pm EDT
By Patrick Worsnip
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - China joined Western powers for the first time to deplore Myanmar’s crushing of pro-democracy demonstrations and call for political dialogue there in a statement by the U.N. Security Council on Thursday.
The hard-fought statement urged the military junta that has ruled Myanmar for 45 years to free all political prisoners and detained protesters soon and prepare for a “genuine dialogue” with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
- - -
A first step!
“Let’s talk about fixing Burma AFTER we immediately withdraw from Iraq in a manner wholly safe for our troops and end the talk about attacking Iran.”
This should actually read “wholly safe for IRAQIS “. Considering we are responsible for 1,000,000 (1 million) Iraqi deaths (approximately 1 friggin marine for 250 Iraqis), im really tired of hearing how much OUR troops are friggin suffering.
“detentions between 6,000 and 10,000″ but that is just a fraction of how many Iraqi citizens the Bush admin is holding without any legal authority. Oh I guess the authority comes from the illegal invasion. And how about some photos of dead Iraqis floating in the Tigris. At least the Burmese junta is made up of Burmese ultra nationalists and not all Burmese monks are saints.
My perception is that this is the predictable end of the concentration of power, and the people of the United States will meet the same fate unless they declare their independence from their so-called (criminal) government, pledge their alligence to the earth, and immediately stop funding (aka “taxes”) the inevitable crimes of people with too much power.
“Let them protest all they want, as long as they pay their taxes.” Alexander Haig
“I should like merely to understand how it happens, that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him.” ‘The Politics of Obedience’ written in 1550 by La Boetie
jesus,mohammed and buddha,all get along,together,spendidly-why cant we??
Change “Burmese Junta” to “America” and change “Monks” to “War Protesters” and the article will soon apply to this country.
1. whitewatersally, jesus,mohammed and buddha all got along together, probably only because they lived hundreds of years apart from each other.
————
2. anyway - why the outrage over this? obviously the only reason we even hear about this is that they have resources our “team” is after and our “team”’s safety may be threatened by this event. Why do we suddenly care more about Burma than about Darfur, Congo, Irak, Iran, Afghanistan, Gaza? Another atrocity in a long train of atrocities - what to do, what to do? Will it take your attention off the obscenities in the Middle East, West Asia, and Africa? Perfect. Will it give you compassion-fatigue? Done, done, and done!
Wow Americans supports human rights in Myamnar!Whoopdiedamndo! Wish they would use their energies to stop the erosion of human rights at home. But that’s Americans for you: Do as I say not as I do!
Chinese people do not need a boycott of their Olympic games. They need support.
Who every thinks turning their backs on Burma and China is a good idea has got rocks for brains. When will people learn not to hate first and ask questions later?
Instead of boycotting the Chinese olympics, or anything Chinese for that matter, why don’t we start closer at home and boycott the corporate oligarchs who support the Myanmar Junta. But better yet let us start even closer to home and boycott all greed and hatred in our hearts before we start pointing fingers at whole groups of people/governments whom are no more directly responsible for the travesty in Burma than you and I are.
Gee, thanks Cheveron/Unical/Rice/Haliburton.
Everytime the chimp smirks and starts talking about the iraqi or monk freedom and democracy and how we need to help them, they all wind up dead and tortured and in a police state the following week.
I don’t think anybody wants your help anymore you goosestepping son of a Nazi…..
Boycott everything the Fortune 500 makes. It’s the only thing they care about.
pac
Today, Burma.
Tomorrow, the United States.
If you care about Burma please think about signing and spreading the petition to your elected congresspersor and senator.
PETITION TO SENATOR BARBARA BOXER ON BEHALF OF THE BURMESE PEOPLE
To Your Senator/Representative
We the undersigned petition you to sponsor hearings concerning the Burmese government’s violent repression of the monks and peoples of Burma.
A recent Independent (UK) article, dated 10/11/07, indicates there are Burmese witnesses who have fled the country and whom could illuminate the truth to the world by testifying in Congressional hearings.
Will you help the cause of the Burmese people who are suffering so greatly today?
The things that we Americans cherish so much, peace, freedom, and democracy, the Burmese people do not have. By your actions, you may help to promote these virtues of so-called civilization in Burma and quickly bring to an end the suffering of both the Burmese people and their oppressors.
Please look deeply into your heart and do the right thing for not only the Burmese people but for all of humanity.
Thank you.