burma

Only now, the full horror of Burmese junta's repression of monks emerges

By Rosalind Russell
The Independent
11 October 2007

Monks confined in a room with their own excrement for days, people beaten just for being bystanders at a demonstration, a young woman too traumatised to speak, and screams in the night as Rangoon's residents hear their neighbours being taken away. Harrowing accounts smuggled out of Burma reveal how a systematic campaign of physical punishment and psychological terror is being waged by the Burmese security forces as they take revenge on those suspected of involvement in last month's pro-democracy uprising.

BURMA: Fear Over the Country

By Moe Yu May and Marwaan Macan-Markar

RANGOON, Oct 4 (IPS) - Nights are no more the same for the 45-year-old Buddhist monk who lives in a monastery in the Myay Ni Gone area, close to the heart of this dilapidated city. Nor is sleep.

''I live in fear after dark. I cannot sleep because of worry that the soldiers will raid us again, at night,’’ he said in quiet tones on a recent morning walking down a barely crowded street in Burma’s commerical capital. As he spoke, he looked around, gauging people nearby.

''I feel insecure when I see soldiers on the streets, or even the riot police,’’ he added. ‘’I expect them to hit me like they did the other monks. I fear they may arrest me.’’

We ask what future is there for democracy following the ruling junta's brutal supression of protests led by monks.

Part 1

Part 2

Chevron’s Pipeline Is the Burmese Regime’s Lifeline

Oct 2, 2007
By Amy Goodman

Amy Goodman
The image was stunning: tens of thousands of saffron-robed Buddhist monks marching through the streets of Rangoon [also known as Yangon], protesting the military dictatorship of Burma. The monks marched in front of the home of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who was seen weeping and praying quietly as they passed. She hadn’t been seen for years. The democratically elected leader of Burma, Suu Kyi has been under house arrest since 2003. She is considered the Nelson Mandela of Burma, the Southeast Asian nation renamed Myanmar by the regime.

Part 1

People & Power examines the clash of people power with military might in Myanmar. What should the international community do? What can it do?

Part 2