Night raids in Myanmar

Hoping the world is still looking at the two Koreas and the South African mine disaster, the Myanmar government stepped up repression of the revolt last night (CNN/AP); 

After crushing the democracy uprising with guns, Myanmar’s junta stepped up its campaign to intimidate citizens Wednesday, sending troops to drag people from their homes in the middle of the night and letting others know they were marked for retribution.

“We have photographs! We are going to make arrests!” soldiers yelled from loudspeakers on military vehicles that patrolled the streets in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city

People living near the Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar’s most revered shrine and a flash point of unrest during the protests, reported that security forces swept through several dozen homes about 3 a.m., taking away many men and even some women for questioning.

A U.N. Development Program employee, Myint Nwe Moe, and her husband, brother-in-law and driver were among those detained, the U.N. agency said.

Dozens of Buddhist monks jammed Yangon’s main train station after being ordered to vacate their monasteries — centers of the anti-government demonstrations — and told to go back to their hometowns and villages.

Another AP story on CNN tells of the brutality perpetrated on ethnic minorities in Myanmar;

The Karen, the Shan and other minority groups who live along the Myanmar-Thai border have been attacked, raped and killed by government soldiers. Their thatched-roofed, bamboo homes have been torched. Men have been seized into forced labor for the army, while women, children and the elderly either hide out in nearby jungles until the soldiers leave or flee over the mountains to crowded, makeshift refugee camps.

“Many, many thousands of Karen have died in those 60 years,” Karen National Union secretary general Mahn Sha said this week of his people’s struggle for autonomy since 1947.

The military junta has denied reports of atrocities and says the ethnic rebels are “terrorists” trying to overthrow the government.

And the UN fiddles. Meanwhile, Enzo  (with a hat tip to Kate) reports that, after the night time raids;

The only thing of which one can be sure is that somewhere in the country large numbers of people are being held in an invisible prison camp, without charge, without legal recourse and without the ability to communicate.

Incognito warns that there’s a Burma-related email virus. Kate emails me that Sylvester “John Rambo” Stallone witnessed the atrocities in Burma while making Rambo 4 – but one must wonder why he waited for Myanmar to become world news before he bothered to mention it – couldn’t be the publicity, could it?

Gateway Pundit reports 50 students get 5 years at hard labor for last week’s protests.

Category: Foreign Policy