Report From Myanmar Says Government Is 'Hunting Dissidents'

As the AP reports via USA Today, an American diplomat in Myanmar (Burma) says the junta is still hunting down dissidents:

Soldiers said they were hunting pro-democracy protesters in Myanmar's largest city Wednesday and the top U.S. diplomat in the country said military police had pulled people out of their homes during the night.

Military vehicles patrolled the streets before dawn with loudspeakers blaring that: "We have photographs. We are going to make arrests!"

Shari Villarosa, the acting U.S. ambassador in Myanmar, said in a telephone interview that people in Yangon were terrified.

"From what we understand, military police ... are traveling around the city in the middle of the night, going into homes and picking up people," she said.

The AP report also contains this tantalizing nugget:

European Union nations agreed Wednesday to toughen sanctions against the military regime. Diplomats said extra sanctions would include an expanded visa ban for members of the military junta, wider restrictions on investment in the country, and a blockade on trade in metals, timber and gemstones.

But the new measures do not include a specific ban on European oil and gas companies from doing business in Myanmar, diplomats said.

And there's more ... but I cannot get to it at the moment. I hope to be back with an update later. In the meantime, if you have more on this story, please don't hesitate to post it in the comments.

Myanmar: Thousands Of Protesters And Hundreds Of Monks Killed And Dumped In The Jungle

A former Myanmar intelligence official, who defected and headed for Thailand after being ordered to take part in a massacre of monks, has reported that hundreds of monks and thousands of protesters have been killed in recent days, and that their bodies have been dumped in the jungle, according to the UK's Daily Mail. The regime has been cracking down on protests in the last week or so, and has admitted about a dozen deaths. But

the most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win, said: "Many more people have been killed in recent days than you've heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand."
...

At his border hideout last night, 42-year-old Mr Win said he hopes to cross into Thailand and seek asylum at the Norwegian Embassy.

The 42-year-old chief of military intelligence in Rangoon's northern region, added: "I decided to desert when I was ordered to raid two monasteries and force several hundred monks onto trucks.

"They were to be killed and their bodies dumped deep inside the jungle. I refused to participate in this."

The massacre of monks and protesters has been hidden from the world for the last few days as the government has cut phone and internet services. Refugees are now virtually the only source of news.

Reports from exiles along the frontier confirmed that hundreds of monks had simply "disappeared" as 20,000 troops swarmed around Rangoon yesterday to prevent further demonstrations by religious groups and civilians.

Word reaching dissidents hiding out on the border suggested that as well as executions, some 2,000 monks are being held in the notorious Insein Prison or in university rooms which have been turned into cells.

There were reports that many were savagely beaten at a sports ground on the outskirts of Rangoon, where they were heard crying for help.

Others who had failed to escape disguised as civilians were locked in their bloodstained temples.

According to Swedish diplomat Liselotte Agerlid,

the Burmese people now face possibly decades of repression. "The Burma revolt is over," she added.
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"Now the military has cracked down the revolt, and the result may very well be that the regime will enjoy another 20 years of silence, ruling by fear."
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"We were informed from one of the largest embassies in Burma that 40 monks in the Insein prison were beaten to death today and subsequently burned."

The diplomat also said that three monasteries were raided yesterday afternoon and are now totally abandoned.

Although international agencies have not managed to provide any protection for the pro-democracy advocates in the nation formerly known as Burma, the UN is seeking a meeting with the rulers.

The United Nations special envoy was in Burma's new capital today seeking meetings with the ruling military junta.

Ibrahim Gambari met detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon yesterday. But he has yet to meet the country's senior generals as he attempts to halt violence against monks and pro-democracy activists.

It is anticipated the meeting will happen tomorrow.

And a fat lot of good it's gonna do.

Myanmar: Protest Crackdown Leaves At Least Nine Dead

Troops cleared protesters from the streets of central Yangon on Thursday, giving them 10 minutes to leave or be shot as the Myanmar junta intensified a two-day crackdown on the largest uprising in 20 years.

At least nine people were killed, state television said, on a day when far fewer protesters took to the streets after soldiers raided monasteries in the middle of the night and rounded up hundreds of the monks who had been leading them.

One of dead was a Japanese photographer, shot when soldiers cleared the area near Sule Pagoda -- a city-centre focus of the protests -- as loudspeakers blared out warnings, ominous reminders of the ruthless crushing of a 1988 uprising.

Aung Hla Tun of Reuters reports:

The army, which killed an estimated 3,000 people in 1988, moved in after 1,000 chanting protesters hurled stones and water bottles at troops, prompting a police charge in which shots were fired and the Japanese went down.

Soldiers shot dead three more people in a subsequent protest outside the city's heart as crowds regrouped and taunted troops. Their bodies were tossed in a ditch as troops chased fleeing people, beating anybody they could catch, witnesses said.

Another Buddhist monk -- adding to the five reported killed on Wednesday when security forces tried to disperse huge crowds protesting against 45 years of military rule -- was killed during the midnight raids on monasteries, witnesses said.

Monks were kicked and beaten as soldiers rounded them up and shoved them onto trucks. Some of the monasteries were emptied of all but the very old and sick, people living nearby said.

And ...

"Doors of the monasteries were broken, things were ransacked and taken away," a witness said. "It's like a living hell seeing the monasteries raided and the monks treated cruelly."

After darkness fell and curfew hour loomed, sporadic bursts of automatic rifle fire echoed over the city of five million people.

Nice. Reuters has much more.

TIMELINE: 45 years of resistance and repression in Myanmar

U.S. demands immediate halt to Myanmar crackdown

Myanmar's people take desperate measures to survive

People in Myanmar were already living on the edge before the government doubled fuel prices, raising the cost of just about everything and shoving many over the precipice.

In a country where more than a quarter of the 56 million people live on less than a dollar a day, the sudden announcement of fuel price hikes on August 15 became the tipping point of a crisis that had been building for a long time.

For retired headmaster U Sein, 82, and his wife Daw Nu, 80, the plunge in their quality of life has been nightmarish.

"My monthly pension now buys only two cups of tea although it used to be enough for the monthly subsistence diet for my wife and me when I first retired over 20 years ago," U Sein told Reuters in May, months before fuel prices went up.

The cost of living had soared since the failed uprising of 1988, residents say, but has really rocketed the past year.

Myanmar information window closing, says dissident

A "window of information" is closing in Myanmar as the military junta battles networks of disaffected citizens by restricting mobile phones and Internet access, a leading dissident journalist said on Thursday.

The biggest anti-junta protests in two decades in one of the world's most closed states has been broadcast around the world thanks to exiled journalists in countries such as Thailand and India and their clandestine contacts on the inside.

So far, citizen reporters have managed to send information and photos across the Internet, even using the social networking site Facebook or hiding news within e-greetings cards to outwit the military government.

Pictures of marches of monks and civilians and the response by security forces is on TV screens around the world in hours.
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It could soon change.

"The window of information is closing," said Soe Myint, Editor-In-Chief of the Internet-based Mizzima News Agency and a former hijacker of a Thai International Airways plane in 1990.

"It's getting more and more difficult," Myint added in an interview with Reuters. "Many blogging sites are now blocked and opposition activists have had their mobile phones cut."