rangoon

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.’’