The Hindu : Front Page : Myanmar steps up crackdown

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Friday, Sep 28, 2007
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Myanmar steps up crackdown

P.S. Suryanarayana

— PHOTO: AFP/ MoeMaka Media

TURMOIL: Protesters stage a march in downtown Yangon as clashes between Myanmar’s ruling junta and demonstrators intensified on Thursday.

SINGAPORE: Myanmar’s military junta on Thursday intensified its crackdown on protesters. Several persons were either killed or wounded in the firing by security forces on demonstrators in Yangon. (AFP put the death toll at nine.)

The dissident National Council of the Union of Burma (NCUB) said the Myanmar security forces, apparently soldiers, “fired shots into the crowd” near the Sule pagoda in central Yangon. But neither the NCUB nor Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) could specify the exact toll in the junta’s latest action against the protesters.

While at least three, and perhaps five, Buddhist monks were killed in the crackdown on Wednesday, students were believed to be the main victims of the firing on Thursday. A Japanese national on the scene was also among those killed, NCUB said, unable, though, to confirm its fears that up to 100 protesters, all citizens of Myanmar, might have lost their lives.

The day began on a sombre note, with the junta, styled the Peace and Development Council (SPDC) appearing to have ignored the call from the United Nations Security Council for restraint in meeting the spiralling show of dissent.

NCUB and NLD sources told The Hindu that the SPDC’s security agents, in “brutal” overnight raids, ransacked monasteries in Yangon and at least two other places – Moenyin and Moekaung, both in northern Myanmar.

Hundreds of monks were arrested. The security forces were believed to have resorted to violence against the monks, who had been leading the protest marches for over a week.

Monks were missing in the vanguard of the protests on Thursday. The firing took place after thousands, mostly students and some activists of the National League for Democracy, were given hardly 10 minutes to disperse.

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