Neverending trouble in Burma

As the world’s attention shifts elsewhere this week, things are looking bad for the Burmese. The UN official tasked with seeking a solution to the Myanmar government’s brutal suppression of protests last week, finally met with the junta leader, Than Shwe, after waiting four days and got a whole 15 minutes, according to Gateway Pundit.

Spanish Pundit writes, from Burmanet News that the Burmese monks, which have survived, could be forced into hard labor.

Among those detained are young monks aged between 16 and 18, and novices as young as 5 to 10 years old. Nuns are also being held at the compound, along with 140 other women. All monks and nuns have been disrobed and made to wear civilian clothes.

Yahoo’s India News reports that thousands may already be in concentration camps;

Thousands of pro-democracy protestors, including several hundreds monks in Yangon have gone missing, and are reportedly being lodged in secret government buildings which have been converted into concentration camps, according to a London daily.

Seventeen hundred protestors, including monks, women and children, have been reportedly confined inside the former campus of the Government Technology Institute.

Blogmeister reports that now that junta has rounded up monks and safely dealt with them, the Myanmar government is now hunting Burmese bloggers – the major source of reports of events there. An AP report tends to suggest that’s true;

The government has ordered local officials and hotels to be on the lookout for key pro-democracy activists, sending out their names and photos, said a local official who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.

“We have been instructed to inform higher authorities immediately if we sight any of these people in our area,” he said. The list of dissidents includes at least one member of the 88 Generation Students group, the most active in carrying out nonviolent anti-government protests, the official said. Most of the group’s top members were arrested Aug. 21, two days after the first of the current round of protests.

And the Myanmar government has learned from Noreiga and Chavez to use civilian thugs to do the dirty work;

 “I believe the junta does not use uniformed personnel because they don’t want to be blamed for their action,” said a diplomat who asked not to be identified because of protocol. “Now that they are using civilians, they can claim, as they have done in newspapers, that it was the agitated public that stopped the protesters.”

Times Online tells the story of one Myanmar soldier’s decision to flee instead of shooting Monks. And just now, more than week after the brutal killings in Rangoon, the UN starts shifting around in it’s collective ample seat.

CNN quotes an aide worker’s account of the violence last week;

“There was a body lying on the road, there was another body slumped over the back of the truck,” said the woman, who did not want to be identified for security reasons.

“There were crowds gathered approximately 400 meters away but they were not coming closer to help out. And it just looked like (the bodies) had been left there for people to witness, for people to see what they were capable of.”

And Myanmar’s foreign minister charges political opportunists;

Myanmar’s foreign minister U Nyan Win on Monday blamed intense pro-democracy demonstrations in his country on “political opportunists” and declared that “normalcy has now returned to Myanmar.”

Addressing the U.N. General Assembly, Win defended what he called the government’s “seven-step road map” to draft a new constitution and hold elections.

“Recent events make clear that there are elements within and outside the country who wish to derail the ongoing process so that they can take advantage of the chaos that would follow,” he said. “They have become more and more emboldened and have stepped up their campaign to confront the government.”

Bloodthirsty Liberal and Christopher Hitchens (ya know, I saw him at the protest last week, I recognized him as someone I should know, but I couldn’t figure out who Hitchens was – I realize it was him now – but he got a haircut since last time I saw him) identify the common thread that runs through every brutal regime in the world, including Burma - China;

China, a key trading power and importer of gas from Myanmar, has refused to take sides in the unrest so far, and Premier Wen Jiabao called Saturday on “all parties” to exercise restraint and seek stability “through peaceful means”.

But Russia’s not much help, either;

Russia’s ambassador to the council did strike a more moderate tone, saying that Myanmar’s problems should be solved by peaceful dialogue and democratic changes without any pressure from outside.

With rumors of tens of thousands of dead, negotiation hardly sounds reasonable at this point. Kate of A Columbo-Americana’s Perspective writes that there’s another protest at the Myanmar Embassy Friday.

Category: Foreign Policy