Burma Cracks Down Violently on Anti-Junta Protests

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 27, 2007

BANGKOK, Sept. 26 -- After nine days of restraint, Burma's military rulers cracked down on protesting Buddhist monks Wednesday, with security forces firing warning shots, shooting tear gas canisters, swinging truncheons and making scores of arrests to suppress anti-government marchers.

The violence, despite appeals for negotiations from around the world, suggested that the junta has decided to put an end to what has become Burma's most serious political uprising since 1988, even at the price of more opprobrium from abroad.

Maung Maung, secretary general of the National Council of the Union of Burma, an exile group based in Thailand, said he had reports from a Rangoon hospital that four protesting monks were treated for bullet wounds and a fifth had died after being shot. The government said one person had been killed.

Khim Maung Win of the Democratic Voice of Burma, an opposition media organization based in Norway, said eight people -- five monks and three civilians -- were killed, the Associated Press reported.

The reports represent the first serious casualties in the near-daily protests that have shaken Burma this week and last, swelling into an open challenge to the generals who have run the country, also known as Myanmar, for most of the last half-century.

Despite the crackdown, thousands of maroon-robed monks, joined by cheering students and other lay democracy activists, marched in two columns through the center of Rangoon, Burma's largest city, picking up support as they went, according to exile groups, news agency dispatches and images transmitted from the country electronically.

Exile groups in Thailand estimated that the number of marchers and protesters on the sidelines reached more than 100,000 by the end of the afternoon, making it one of the largest demonstrations since the rebellion began. Other big gatherings were reported in Mandalay, Burma's second-largest city, in Sittwe on the northwest coast and in several other towns across the country.

The protesters came into the streets in defiance of orders handed down Tuesday evening banning gatherings of five or more people and imposing a dusk-to-dawn curfew in Rangoon and Mandalay.

According to sources in exile and news agency accounts, one group clashed with police near the Shwedagon Pagoda, a revered shrine that has been the departure point for daily protest marches since the middle of the month. Monks burned two cars and some were beaten by police wielding truncheons, according to reports reaching the exile groups.

A confrontation also erupted outside the Sule Pagoda, another shrine that has been the destination for marches, as young monks tried to force their way through a police line, the reports said. Several monks were seen being hustled away by police and driven off in trucks, the Associated Press reported.

Exile groups in Thailand estimated that more than 200 may have been arrested in all. One of those taken into custody, the AP said, was a prominent comedian known as Zarganar, who with other cultural figures had openly backed the monks.

The shootings occurred during a third clash, near the Bahan district, Maung Maung said he was told by informants in Rangoon.

Early Thursday, security forces raided two prominent Buddhist monasteries, attacking and taking away more than 70 monks, AP said. And Myint Thein, spokesman for detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's political party, was arrested, family members said.

In response to the crisis, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday he would dispatch his top Burma envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, to the region to try to arrange a meeting with the country's leaders.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, expressed hope that Gambari could help "prevent" Burmese leaders from continuing the crackdown and lead them toward negotiations. He voiced frustration that China and Russia, Burma's closest supporters on the 15-member council, refused to support a tougher reaction.

China's U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya said his government believes "sanctions are not helpful," adding, "We hope the government and the people down there could sort out their differences and restore stability."

The bulk of Wednesday's protesters marched through the city peacefully on the way to the Sule Pagoda. But they were turned back by a cordon of armed soldiers and police with tear gas and truncheons. It was near the Sule temple that several thousand government opponents were killed in 1988 by troops putting down protests against the military's ruling State Peace and Development Council.

The soldiers who put down the 1988 uprising had been transferred into Rangoon, then the capital, from outlying areas because of fears that the city's normal garrison would not move against civilians. According to Maung Maung, there are signs that similar hesitations are arising in the Burmese military this time.

A declaration from a group calling itself the People's Patriotic Armed Forces Alliance was circulated among exile groups. In it, the authors described themselves as military officers and called on fellow officers to disobey if ordered to fire on protesting monks, students or democracy activists.

"On behalf of soldiers, we the People's Patriotic Armed Forces Alliance seriously and categorically warn the SPDC's top brass that if they solve the present situation with violence rather than seek peace, divergences would emerge inside the armed forces and defiance or mutiny would break out," the statement said, using initials for the junta.

Maung Maung said there was no way to judge the authenticity of the statement or how many officers it represented. But he added that someone identifying himself as a Burmese intelligence officer had posted comments on an exile blog Wednesday morning saying that similar sentiments have emerged in Burma's internal security services.

With foreign correspondents generally barred from entering Burma, information and images of events have been spread by e-mail and cellphones. This has frustrated the military's attempts to prevent reporting on the protests, but also has made journalists somewhat dependent on untrained and highly engaged sources passing along what they hear.

The contrast is stark between such modern communications and the robed monks leading the uprising. In a nation where more than 80 percent of the people identify with the Buddhist faith, the monks have long been seen as a source of guidance, inspiration and moral authority. In that light, the junta was reluctant to be seen attacking them.

Most of the monks in the streets in recent days are students from teaching monasteries, Maung Maung said, and some of their elders have urged them to return to class.

Staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.