Troops attack monasteries

Burmese troops and riot police launched a brutal operation to drive monks from their monasteries in Rangoon in pre-dawn raids today, reports Edward Loxton. At least 600 monks were dragged from their cells, beaten and taken into custody by armed security forces wielding clubs and firing tear gas. Two revered abbots were among the arrested clergy.

The raids were carried out as Rangoon, under a dusk-to-dawn curfew, counted the cost of a day of violence in which at least six demonstrators were shot dead and hundreds arrested.

.....

The regime appears determined to stamp out the protests at all costs and clearing Rangoon's leading temples of its monks appears to be part of that strategy.
Eyewitnesses said troops and riot police showed no quarter in rounding up the monks, breaking their way into the monasteries, trampling on Buddha images and other revered objects. Some monasteries were looted, according to the reports of horrified novices.

Some monks were beaten senseless. Only monks in monastery sickbays were left unmolested and avoided arrest.

The Burmese regime sent two crack divisions from remote Karen State to help quell the Rangoon protests, reportedly ordering their commanders to tell their troops they were involved in an action to save the country from the hands of rebels receiving support from the capitalist West.

Sporadic demonstrations were held throughout Rangoon today, but riot police and troops appeared to be under orders to hold their fire, probably because of the presence in the city of UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari, writes Edward Loxton.

One of the city's leading monasteries, Ngwe Kyar Yar, was raided by security officers during the early hours this morning, and about 200 monks were dragged from their beds and loaded into army trucks.
Around 1,000 monks are now being held, either at Rangoon's notorious Insein prison or at a government ministry compound. Kangaroo courts have already been in session, handing out sentences of up to six years’ imprisonment, according to Burmese sources with prison contacts.

It transpires that when troops first raided Ngwe Kyar Yar on Thursday, they plundered the monastery, seizing valuable offertory objects and cutting off the jeweled head of an ancient statue of Buddha.

Opposition sources said today they had counted at least 200 dead in the three days of clashes. Several hundred people have been injured and many are now in hiding from the authorities.

.....

YANGON : A UN special envoy arrived in Myanmar on Saturday for talks with the ruling military, which has locked down the nation's biggest city in a violent campaign to choke off mass demonstrations.
The United States has called on Myanmar's generals to also allow Ibrahim Gambari to meet with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the democracy icon who has been held under house arrest for most of the past 18 years.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon dispatched the Nigerian-born Gambari to broker negotiations between the isolated military regime and its pro-democracy opponents, who have mounted two weeks of nationwide mass rallies.

A violent crackdown to end the demonstrations -- which has claimed at least 13 lives since Wednesday -- appeared to have largely succeeded in deterring anti-government campaigners from returning to the streets.
In two clashes Saturday, troops beat and dispersed protesters in Yangon, but for the most part the country's largest city was eerily quiet with security forces outnumbering demonstrators and locking down Buddhist monasteries.

.....

Gambari has visited Myanmar twice before, and on one occasion was allowed to see opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who last week was able to briefly meet protesting monks.

The monks who initially led the protests were nowhere to be seen in Yangon after a brutal campaign of arrests, bashings and monastery raids which has shocked the country.
Troops have blockaded many big monasteries, including those in the religious capital of Mandalay in central Myanmar, and monks are only allowed to move around in small groups.

A Western diplomat based in Yangon said Saturday there were reports of divisions within the military on how to handle the crisis in Mandalay, home to the majority of Myanmar's 400,000 monks.
On Friday, diplomats said they had received information from several sources about "acts of insubordination" within the army and that some soldiers were willing to take the side of demonstrators.

The World Food Programme, meanwhile, said the bloody crackdown has hampered efforts to distribute food to 500,000 vulnerable people, mostly children, and appealed to the military "for access to all parts of the country."

Myanmar's main Internet connection, cut Friday, remained off Saturday, severely reducing the flow of video, photos and first-hand reports of the violence, which helped inform the world of the crisis in the isolated nation.