Burma: Military launch raids on monasteries

Burmese security forces raided two Buddhist monasteries this morning, beating up and hauling away more than 70 monks after a day of violent confrontation, sources said.

The security forces used firepower for the first time yesterday against street protests that have brewed over the past month into the biggest demonstrations against Burma’s military rulers since 1988.

At least one man was killed and others wounded in chaotic clashes in Rangoon.

After midnight, security forces arrested Myint Thein, the spokesman for opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party, family members said.

Unconfirmed reports said other members of the National League for Democracy were also arrested.

At least two monasteries, hotbeds of the pro-democracy movement, were raided by security personnel during the early hours today.

A monk at the Ngwe Kyar Yan monastery, pointing to bloodstains on the concrete floor, said a number of monks were beaten and at least 70 of its 150 monks taken away in vehicles.

Shots were fired in the air during the chaotic raid, he said.

A female lay disciple said a number of monks were also arrested at the Moe Gaung monastery which was being guarded by soldiers. Both monasteries are located in Rangoon’s northern suburbs.

“Even a monk who was sick was taken away,” she said.

Dramatic images of the protests, many transmitted from the secretive southeast Asian nation by dissidents using mobile phones and the internet, riveted world attention on the escalating standoff between the military regime and its opponents.

Protesters and even bystanders in Rangoon, Burma’s biggest city, pelted police with bottles and rocks in some places. Onlookers helped monks escape arrest by bundling them into taxis and other vehicles and shouting “Go, go, go, run!”

The government said one man was killed when police opened fire during the ninth consecutive day of demonstrations, but dissidents outside Burma reported receiving news of up to eight deaths.

Some reports said the dead included monks, who are widely revered in Burma, and the emergence of such martyr figures could stoke public anger against the regime and escalate the violence.

As the stiffest challenge to the generals in two decades, the crisis that began on August 19 with protests over a fuel price hike has drawn increasing international pressure on the isolated regime, especially from its chief economic and diplomatic ally, China.

The United States and the European Union issued a joint statement decrying the assault on peaceful demonstrators and calling on the junta to open talks with democracy activists, including detained opposition leader Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate.

“What’s going on in Burma is outrageous,” US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who was sending a special envoy to the region, urged the junta “to exercise utmost restraint toward the peaceful demonstrations taking place, as such action can only undermine the prospects for peace, prosperity and stability in Myanmar”.

There was no sign of the government backing down, and monks said the violence would not halt what has become the most sustained anti-junta protest since a failed 1988 democracy uprising.

In that crisis, soldiers shot into crowds of peaceful demonstrators, killing thousands.

The junta issued an edict on Tuesday banning gatherings of more than five people, but the order was ignored by democracy activists and the public alike yesterday.

Thousands amassed at the golden Shwedagon Pagoda, including monks in cinnamon robes, students, and activists waving flags emblazoned with the fighting peacock - a symbol of Burma’s democracy movement. Large crowds of bystanders also gathered to watch.

Police fired warning shots and tear gas trying to scatter the demonstrators, and dragged monks into army trucks – the first mass arrests since protests against the military dictatorship erupted.

Reporters saw some monks beaten, and an exile dissident group said about 300 monks and other protesters had been arrested in small clashes across Rangoon.

Burma’s government said security forces fired when a crowd that included what it called “so-called monks” refused to disperse at the Sule Pagoda and tried to grab weapons from officers. It said police used “minimum force”.

The junta statement, read on state media last night, said a 30-year-old man was killed by a police bullet.

It said two men aged 25 and 27 and a 47-year-old woman also were hurt when police fired, but did not specify their injuries.

Witnesses told The Associated Press they saw two women and one young man with gunshot wounds.

Exiled Burmese journalists and democracy activists released reports of higher death tolls, but the accounts could not be independently confirmed.

Aye Chan Naing, chief editor or Democratic Voice of Burma, an opposition-run shortwave radio service based in Norway, said activists were using the internet and mobile phones to funnel news out of Burma.

During the marches in Rangoon, demonstrators tried to shame one group of soldiers by chanting: “You are the army of the people, we are feeding you! Be just to us!”