Monks On The Move

[Flashermac]

Burmese security shoot, kick Singaporean

 

Singapore (dpa) - A Singaporean man working in Burma was shot with rubber bullets and kicked by riot police, the Foreign Affairs Ministry said Saturday.

 

"Our embassy in Rangoon has offered to visit him and arrange medical treatment," the ministry's statement said.

 

The embassy has also offered assistance for him and his family to leave.

 

"Singapore is appalled and shocked by this act of wanton violence," the ministry said. "It underscores the need for the (Burmese) authorities to exercise utmost restraint and desist from the use of force."

 

Burmese nationals living in Singapore in messages urged compatriots to dress in red to show solidarity with the monks and others protesting the military regime.

 

"We chose red because that represents the blood they have shed for our people, the country and our future," said Zeyar Lin Aung, who works in Singapore.

 

Zeyer and others have prepared a petition urging strong action against Burma's military government. They plan to submit it to the Singapore government.

 

Hundreds of Burmese nationals working in the city-state have been gathering at Buddhist temples, offering prayers for peace and stability for their country.

 

In an e-mail sent to The Straits Times, the injured Singaporean said he was on the way to his office Thursday when riot police blocked the road. He stopped the car and got out with his wife.

 

"Suddenly, riot police and soldiers drove the truck around the corner and started firing shots at the crowd," said the man, who requested anonymity as he feared for his safety.

 

The couple ran to one side and crouched down.

 

"I was shot twice, but I did not know what hit me," he said, adding that his legs were bruised by 40-mm riot control munitions, known as rubber bullets.

 

He was forced into a drain with other members of a crowd for 15 minutes.

 

"They just shot at us for no reason," he said.

[Fidel]

Here's a video of another shooting:

Video

 

 

[Torneyboy]

Scary..

[bust]

 

By staff writers

29 Sep 2007

 

As yet unconfirmed reports from military sources in Burma say that there is significant unrest in the army, with reports of mutinying in some areas and claims that a coup is taking place. Meanwhile the death toll of protesters has been growing significantly.

 

It is unclear how many are involved in the revolts. Reports cite heavy shooting in the former Burmese capital. The organisation Helfen ohne Grenzen (Help without Frontiers) is reporting that "Soldiers from the 66th LID (Light Infantry Divison) have turned their weapons against other government troops and possibly police in North Okkalappa township in Rangoon and are defending the protesters."

 

Meanwhile, military sources in Rangoon are claiming that the regime's number two, General Maung Aye, has staged a coup against Than Shwe, and that his troops are now guarding Aung San Suu Kyi's home. A meeting between him and Suu Kyi is expected. Maung Aye is army commander-in-chief and a renowned pragmatist.

 

One diplomatic source is also saying that Aung San Suu Kyi has been moved to a police academy compound outside Rangoon, where she is expected to meet Maung Aye. As yet, though, there no independent confirmation of this development - which has been published on The First Post's Burma Newsdesk.

 

In an increasingly chaotic situation, the rumour has also gone out that the junta has set up a plot to assassinate the most senior venerable monks (Sanga Maha Naryaka) tonight, making it look as if this has been carried out by the those involved in street protests.

 

Earlier today it emerged that the army had been entering almost all the monasteries in Yangon, arresting and shooting people.

 

Soldiers in Mandalay are among those reported to have refused orders to act against protesters. More recent reports now maintain that soldiers from the 99th LID now being sent there to confront them.

 

Growing numbers of protestors have been gathering in Rangoon, with 10,000 at the Traders Hotel and 50,000 at the Thein Gyi market. The police have turned water cannons against crowds at Sule Pagoda.

 

Many phone lines into the Burmese state have now been cut, mobile networks have been disabled and the national internet service provider has been taken off-line.

[Flashermac]

Hmmm ... the Thai military has a tradition of not firing on each other during coup attempts. Wonder about the Burmese.

 

 

 

[Flashermac]

THE NATION

29 Sep 2007

 

Surayud lays into Burmese junta at UN;

Premier scraps scheduled speech to call for an end to the violence

 

 

Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont took the stage at the UN General Assembly yesterday, echoing Asean member countries and calling upon the Burmese junta to stop using force against the massive demonstrations that have already killed many people.

 

Surayud's original speech on Thai democracy was changed at the last minute and was updated to include Asean's firm stance on the deteriorating situation.

 

Thailand and Burma, being predominantly Buddhist nations, share the belief of non-violence and tolerance.

 

"Thailand therefore finds as unacceptable the use of violence and bodily harm to Buddhists monks and other demonstrators in Yangon [Rangoon]," he told the audience at the UN.

 

Prior to Surayud's speech, foreign ministers of the regional grouping had met on the sidelines of the UN meeting to take a common position over the crisis.

 

They expressed their revulsion to Burma's Foreign Minister Nyan Win over reports that demonstrators were being suppressed by violent force and that there had been a number of fatalities.

 

Singapore's Foreign Minister George Yeo, as the chair of the grouping, issued a statement after the meeting calling on Burma to "exercise utmost restraint and seek a political solution".

 

Burma was urged to resume its efforts at national reconciliation with all parties and to work towards a peaceful transition to democracy. The Asean ministers also called for the release of all political detainees, including Aung San Suu Kyi.

 

With the support of Asean, UN special envoy to Burma Ibrahim Gambari was given the green light to visit Burma. Nyan Win assured the meeting that his visa would be issued in Singapore.

 

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon approved the decision and called on the Burmese authorities to engage in constructive dialogue with his special envoy and to commit to a path of peaceful and inclusive national reconciliation.

 

Gambari was on his way to Singapore and was expected to arrive in Burma in a couple of days, said Foreign Minister Nitya Pibulsonggram.

 

Asean asked the Burmese government to cooperate fully with Gambari.

 

"Gambari's role as a neutral interlocutor among all the parties can help defuse the dangerous situation," said the Asean chair's statement.

 

Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said Burma should fully engage with Gambari and allow access for him to find a solution toward democracy.

 

"Now there is no going backward, there is a need for political process â?¦ they should not deal with the demonstration by using violence," Syed told reporters after the Asean meeting.

 

Nyan Win refused to give an interview to journalists, but Syed said his Burmese counterpart thought that some parties were trying to create instability within Burma.

 

"But we want to see the tangible side of political reconciliation, and that Aung San Suu Kyi is released," Syed said.

 

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in a meeting with her Asean counterparts - which Nyan Win did not attend - praised the Asean move.

 

"The US is determined to keep an international focus on the travesty in Burma," Rice told reporters after the meeting.

[Flashermac]

US first lady condemns Myanmar regime

 

 

Washington (dpa) - US First Lady Laura Bush condemned in a statement late Friday the "horrifying abuses" being committed by the military regime in Burma against its own people.

 

"The deplorable acts of violence being perpetrated against Buddhist monks and peaceful Burmese demonstrators shame the military regime," she said.

 

"Non-violent demonstrations by Buddhist monks and nuns have been met with tear gas, smoke grenades, baton beatings, and automatic weapons."

 

She said that United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari, due to arrive Saturday in Burma, "must be allowed to meet with demonstrating monks and Burma's democratically elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi."

 

The first lady has had a quiet but long-standing interest in the political situation in Burma.

 

"President Bush calls on all nations, especially those nations closest to Burma that have the most influence with the regime, to support the aspirations of the Burmese people, and to join in condemning the junta's use of violence on its own people," she said in her statement.

 

"Seeing Burma through a peaceful democratic transition is in all nations' best interest. The United States stands with the people of Burma. We support their demands for basic human rights: freedom of speech, worship, and assembly. We cannot - and will not - turn our attention from courageous people who stand up for democracy and justice."

 

[kamui]

 

September 29, 2007

Exclusive from Rangoon: democracy takes a beating as uneasy calm returns to streets

Something like normality â?? which means fear â?? returns to Burma as the juntaâ??s iron grip slowly squeezes the life out of protests

 

Kenneth Denby in Rangoon

 

[color:red]The Burmese democracy movement may have died yesterday.[/color] Or it could just be regrouping.

 

It was a loose, ragged, frustrating day in Rangoon, a day of baton charges, beatings and many rumours of much worse. I saw soldiers levelling guns, firing volleys of hard rubber pellets, as well as chases and arrests.

 

But something like normality is returning to Burma: which is to say that, just as they have been for much of the past 40 years, people are afraid again.

 

The democracy leaders have already been arrested, the monks are locked down in their monasteries and, yesterday, it was ordinary people who were the most prominent â?? by their absence.

 

On Thursday I saw old people and middle-aged women cheering on the protesters as they stood face to face with the soldiers in the road to the Sule Pagoda. Yesterday, there were just young men, some of them slightly disreputable looking, with an air less of outraged idealism than of simple mischief.

 

Perhaps the protesters and monks were licking their wounds and planning their next step. But the whole day had about it the depressing atmosphere of a mopping-up operation.

 

Burmaâ??s telecommunications are unreliable at the best of times, but in the past few days an information fog has sunk over the city. One call in ten from a hotel telephone connects to its destination.

 

At the US Embassy, a concrete fortress that opened two weeks ago with the most expensive and up-to-date technology, no one could make an outgoing call all day. Thanks to the paranoia of the generals, mobile phone SIM cards cost $1,500 (£740) each in Burma, but these days they are no more than a status symbol, so rarely do they connect.

 

The internet, conduit for so much of the truth of what has happened here, appears to have been shut down completely. There are two main servers â?? the private one was closed down days ago, but yesterday even the generalsâ?? private server appears to have been switched off.

 

There are other methods, but they are expensive and inconvenient. So there is little alternative but the old-fashioned way â?? to go around and meet people in person.

 

But who? Every day in Rangoon there are fewer and fewer people to talk to. The leaders of the â??88 Generation, the students who first raised the banner against the junta 19 years ago, were arrested, fled or went underground weeks ago. The leadership of the National League for Democracy, the political party of the detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, has also been weakened by arrests this week.

 

One Burmese-speaking foreigner who has spent years living and working in Rangoon told me: â??Itâ??s so depressing. In the past few weeks all my Burmese friends have been arrested.â?Â

 

Ms Suu Kyi remains sealed under the strictest house arrest (the rumours of her being moved to Rangoonâ??s Insein Prison were not true, it seems). Yesterday morning I visited one of the few Burmese activists who is still both at liberty and willing to meet foreigners, a brave man who has been arrested repeatedly in the past and whom I must do nothing more to identify.

 

A friend and I were ushered into the back of his office, but after a few moments his colleague entered and a whispered conversation ensued. Two â??strangersâ? were watching the premises â?? it was time for us to go.

 

A handful of foreign journalists and observers from Western embassies hop from spot to spot in taxis, exchanging the latest rumours when they pass one another. There was talk of a school in the Tamwe district where police had reportedly chased protesters on Thursday, shooting and arresting them. Two acquaintances who went there to investigate found the school closed, but nothing to suggest bloodshed.

 

A friend and I heard of a morning clash between protesters and police at a road junction northeast of the Shwedagon Pagoda but, when we got there, the traffic was flowing normally and the atmosphere was calm.

 

Mornings, though, have remained reasonably normal all through this week. It is in the afternoon when the atmosphere changes and the life drains out of the streets.

 

At lunchtime the soldiers and policemen who have been lurking in backstreets, in parked trucks and in the yards of government buildings emerge to assert control. On the main street leading to the Sule Pagoda, where the Japanese photographer Kenji Nagai died on Thursday, clusters of them were spaced every 20 or 30 yards, between roughly nailed frames of wood festooned with rusty barbed wire.

 

Now the quality of the people passing by began subtly to change. There were fewer women, fewer old people and more young men â?? not marching or chanting but loitering on certain corners where they slowly began to congeal into small groups of a few dozen.

 

As soon as this became obvious, the soldiers moved purposefully forward and the nascent mob dissolved, even before it was fully formed.

 

East of the Sule Pagoda is a grid of streets, narrow and long with shops and tenement buildings above. Here, in the late afternoon, the soldiers and young men played a cat and mouse game â?? and the word â??gameâ? was not inappropriate to the atmosphere for much of the time. At one end of the street, a few hundred lads would gather in an irreverent huddle; at the other end were soldiers, more dangerous than the police, armed with rifles and long batons.

 

A loudspeaker would bark at the lads to disperse, reminding them of the order that gatherings of more than five people are banned in Burma. The bolder men would jeer and bait the soldiers. And sooner or later a squat-looking barrel would be raised and a shower of 40mm rubber pellets would be fired.

 

These contain a core of metal surrounded by hard rubber â?? no doubt they could cause a lot of damage if fired at close range. But I was shown one by a man who had been hit by it, and he seemed more amused than injured. But those who got too close were grabbed and thwacked over their backs with batons before being bundled into an open-backed truck. One person in Rangoon who is not afraid is Shari Villarosa, the chargé dâ??affaires at the US Embassy. She has no need for fear, of course. High walls and American Marines protect her, and relations between the US and the generals have deteriorated far beyond the point where she needs to mind her Ps and Qs. But after a day of frustration it was still immensely refreshing to hear someone in Rangoon spell out the situation.

 

â??This is whatâ??s kept people in line all these years â?? fear and intimidation,â? she said in the air-conditioned cool of her office. â??Iâ??m amazed that people have been as brave as they have been. Maybe theyâ??ll regroup. I donâ??t necessarily believe you can conclude itâ??s been put down . . . The force does not address the underlying sources of grievance. People have been successfully intimidated into keeping their head down â?? maybe. But itâ??s still a struggle to survive, to feed their families, to educate their families, to get healthcare.â?Â

 

She went on: â??There could be another eruption â?? I wouldnâ??t be surprised.â?Â

The Times

[chuckwoww]

I do get the impression of divisions within the Burmese military establishment about how to handle this thing. Obviously they have to appear tough...army officers always do but now might be a good time for a generous gesture.

[Flashermac]

There has often been at least rivalry within the Thai army between the junior officers and the top generals. That's what caused the April Fool's Day coup attempt in 1982. Bet there are similar divisions in the Burmese army.