Only Now, The Full Horror of Burmese Junta’s Repression of Monks Emerges

[babylonsister]

Only Now, The Full Horror of Burmese Junta’s Repression of Monks Emerges
by Rosalind Russell



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.

The first-hand accounts describe a campaign hidden from view, but even more sinister and terrifying than the open crackdown in which the regime’s soldiers turned their bullets and batons on unarmed demonstrators in the streets of Rangoon, killing at least 13. At least then, the world was watching.

The hidden crackdown is as methodical as it is brutal. First the monks were targeted, then the thousands of ordinary Burmese who joined the demonstrations, those who even applauded or watched, or those merely suspected of anti-government sympathies.

“There were about 400 of us in one room. No toilets, no buckets, no water for washing. No beds, no blankets, no soap. Nothing,” said a 24-year-old monk who was held for 10 days at the Government Technical Institute, a leafy college in northern Rangoon which is now a prison camp for suspected dissidents. The young man, too frightened to be named, was one of 185 monks taken in a raid on a monastery in the Yankin district of Rangoon on 28 September, two days after government soldiers began attacking street protesters.

“The room was too small for everyone to lie down at once. We took it in turns to sleep. Every night at 8 o’clock we were given a small bowl of rice and a cup of water. But after a few days many of us just couldn’t eat. The smell was so bad.

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/11/4468/

[emlev]

1. Horror. Thank you for posting this. Yesterday I heard

someone from the U.S. Campaign for Burma speak on the Peter B. Collins Show. He estimated that a couple hundred people are being killed there every day. He said the situation is much worse than what we're hearing. The show is archived at this link from the White Rose Society. The show is three hours long. As I recall, the interview is in the second hour.

Thanks again for posting. I've linked to this thread in the Burma Resources Thread.

[emlev]

2. Burma activist dies under interrogation, says rights group

Burma activist dies under interrogation, says rights group from The Guardian, 10/10.

An active member of Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition party in Burma has died under interrogation, as the crackdown against last month's protests continues....

[emlev]

3. kick for more people to hear about this

[emlev]

4. kick

[Disturbed]

5. Will the UN do something about this horrible Burmese Regime?

Will China & Russia block any action?