After the riots, Burma returns to an unspoken terror

[graphixtech]

Source: The Guardian

After the riots, Burma returns to an unspoken terror
http://www.guardian.co.uk/burma/story/0,,2190324,00.html#article_continue

It's 9.30pm and the buses in downtown Rangoon have stopped running. People scuttle home across the city's potholed roads and broken pavements and the few taxis still operating will only make short trips. With only 30 minutes to curfew, no one takes chances with the Burmese military these days.

(snip)

Sources said that around 1,000 monks had lived and studied at these small monasteries, but where they have gone is not a question that anyone ponders aloud. One man simply put his wrists together in the sign of locked handcuffs when asked where they are.

(snip)

"We are a Buddhist country. We believe that if you do good, you receive good. If you do bad things you receive bad things. This will be the same for the military," said the 30-year-old.
The military announced, in the New Light of Myanmar newspaper, that monks and nuns taken in the raids were defrocked before interrogation and those found to not have participated in the demonstrations were reordained and sent back to their monasteries.

(snip)

Burma's state-run TV channels and newspapers have been packed since last week with footage of big pro-government demonstrations in provincial areas. In daily, full-page notices in newspapers and frequent TV announcements the public are warned against tuning into the "traitors," "saboteurs," and "neo-colonialists" at the BBC, Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/burma/story/0,,2190324,00.html#article_continue

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This is untenable! Let the Red Cross in to help the political prisoners.
Support AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL's efforts.

DU'S BURMA RESOURCES thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1954428&mesg_id=1954428

BURMA comments:
http://english.dvb.no/letstalk.php

[kineneb]

1. what nerve

The military announced, in the New Light of Myanmar newspaper, that monks and nuns taken in the raids were defrocked before interrogation and those found to not have participated in the demonstrations were reordained and sent back to their monasteries.

The military cannot "defrock" the monks and nuns anymore than I can. They are still monks and will be until they decide not to be so. The robes are merely symbols, and deep down the military knows that. The junta's karma is gonna' hurt.

[Acadia Blue]

3. We can't help the freedom lovers in Burma, but we can waste

money and lives in Iraq?

[struggle4progress]

2. Myanmar junta arrests top student dissident

Sat Oct 13, 2007 5:49am EDT

BANGKOK, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Myanmar's military junta has arrested Htay Kywe, a top dissident and student activist during an uprising in 1988, after a two-month manhunt for organisers of fuel price protests in August, a close friend said on Saturday.

The friend, who is living in exile, said Htay Kywe, 39, and three others were arrested overnight in Yangon, where police and soldiers are continuing to raid homes and detain suspects in response to last month's huge pro-democracy protests ...

In an interview with Reuters conducted from hiding on Sept. 13, he correctly predicted the junta's bloody crackdown, but said it would ultimately fail to suppress the push for democracy.

"There is no way this will stop," he said. "Arresting and killing people will not free us from economic hardship."

http://www.reuters.com/article/asiaCrisis/idUSBKK196430