Inside Myanmar’s violent crackdown

Inside Myanmar’s violent crackdown

Eyewitness accounts from the uprising led by Buddhist monks, and how the junta silenced the city after days of bloodshed.

By Marc Hujer, J?ºrgen Kremb and Andreas Lorenz

Oct. 03, 2007 | It is Friday afternoon in Yangon, the former Burmese capital, and the city of 5 million broods silently under heavy rain clouds. The last clashes between demonstrators and soldiers happened in the morning. In Okkalapa, a slum neighborhood on the city’s eastern outskirts, citizens blocked the path of troops as they attempted to storm yet another Buddhist monastery.

The ruling junta’s security forces are attempting to seal off as many monasteries and temples as possible with barricades and barbed wire to prevent the monks from sparking further demonstrations. The strategy has already succeeded around Burma’s national symbol, the Shwedagon, a giant golden pagoda in downtown Yangon. It shimmers in the soft dawn rays of the tropical sun, silent and completely devoid of people. In the areas surrounding the Shwedagon, where the pagoda rises on a hill surrounded by a tangle of markets and monasteries, barricades block the access roads to Burma’s holiest site. Elite government troops are now positioned behind those barricades.

Curious passersby find themselves facing the soldiers’ Kalashnikov automatic rifles. “Just keep going, for heaven’s sake, and don’t look them in the eye,” one local resident urges. “They shoot without warning.” The soldiers have their steel helmets pulled down deep over their faces, and are all wearing orange-red scarves tied around their shirt collars.

Convoys of four or five trucks at a time constantly patrol the temple district. Young recruits sit on the truck beds, pointing their rifles at people on the streets whenever they feel threatened.

read more: salon.com