Myanmar government guns down nine more protesters

According to the AP, nine more people were killed in Yangon, Myanmar today while 11 were wounded in anti-government protests, including an APF reporter;

Among those killed was Kenji Nagai, 50, a journalist covering the protests in Yangon for Japanese video news agency APF News. He was confirmed dead after his father and a company representative identified him in a photo, a Japanese Embassy official in Myanmar told The Associated Press.

Nagai had been covering the protests in Yangon since Tuesday, APF representative Toru Yamaji said.

In Japan, Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said Tokyo will lodge a protest against Myanmar’s military junta.

An American eye witness talked to CNN;

An American witness told CNN soldiers waded into a crowd of protesters in Myanmar and beat several of them mercilessly, at least one of them to death

“All of a sudden, the police and military guys started coming toward the crowd, and all of a sudden started beating them and running after them,” said the woman, who witnessed the incident from atop a nearby building.

“And in one corner they got around, maybe, five or seven people, and they started beating them so bad for almost five minutes, and then they took them and put them in trucks.

“And there was this one guy, laying down on the floor, and he was dead. And then these same police came a few minutes later and picked him up and took him to the police station.”

This time the “Saffron Revolution” was missing their most ardent protesters;

Red-robed Buddhist monks who had led several days of marches were largely absent from the streets Thursday after soldiers raided monasteries the night before. Monks reportedly were beaten and taken into custody or confined to the monasteries.

“This morning, around noon, we went around the city and we saw that most of the monasteries were locked and we saw some of the monks inside,” the American witness said. “So the government is keeping them locked because they don’t want them to go out and protest anymore.”

She said the soldiers used batons, rifle butts and riot shields to beat the protesters.

“It was a crowd of, I would say, around 2,000 people, between 2,000 and 3,000 people today, and they … put 10 monks in front of them as a human shield. But the police didn’t care. They just came and started even beating the monks,” she said.

Streets that had been jammed with as many as 100,000 protesters were deserted by 6 p.m. after the violent crackdown, the witness said.

“Right now it’s a ghost town. I mean, nobody’s outside. Everybody is so afraid,” she said.

“Please, these people need help,” the woman said. “It’s inhumane what’s happening here.”

Not to worry, Anonomous Witness, the UN is on it’s way;

After initial resistance from China, the U.N. Security Council issued a statement of concern about Myanmar’s violent crackdown on Buddhist monks and urged the military regime to let in a special envoy.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, was expected to leave for the region Wednesday night after briefing the emergency council meeting in the afternoon on the fatal violence.

Council diplomats said China, which has close economic ties to Myanmar, did not want any document issued after the closed-door session but relented and agreed to a brief statement, which was read to reporters by France’s U.N. Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert.

And the UN is not just making strong statements, there’ll be emergency meetings, too;

The U.N. Security Council was to hold an emergency meeting here Wednesday over deadly clashes between anti-government protesters and the military junta in Myanmar as the White House described the situation there as “troubling.”

That should have that Myanmarian junta shaking in their collective boots.

The State Department has background on the current turmoil and some historical perspective. Closet Republican gives us an historical overview.

Kate from A Columbo-Americana’s Perspective emailed me about a protest outside of the Myanmar Embassy tomorrow afternoon at 4pm. I might head over and put up some pictures and videos on the Old Blog tomorrow night.

Michael Goldfarb, Gateway Pundit, Michelle Malkin and Andrew Sullivan have all the links that matter. TimesOnline has links to Burmese Blogs.

Category: Foreign Policy, Society