Junta Restricts Protesters, Communications in Burma

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 29, 2007; A01

BANGKOK, Sept. 28 -- Soldiers blockaded Buddhist shrines in Burma on Friday and authorities restricted phone and Internet access, as the military leadership appeared at least temporarily to repress the democracy movement that has shaken the country.

Exiled activists and news agencies with correspondents in Burma reported that hundreds of people had gathered near the Sule Pagoda, in the city of Rangoon, only to be dispersed by soldiers marshaled behind coils of concertina wire and rows of trucks. Otherwise, they said, the downtown area seemed to be sparsely populated as residents reeled from the violence of Thursday, when tens of thousands of angry protesters taunted security forces.

The relative calm came after nearly two weeks of sustained demonstrations led by maroon-robed monks and aimed at ending nearly half a century of military control. Just days ago, protesters had defied warnings from the junta and swarmed streets in cities across the country. On Friday, the Associated Press reported that monks in Rangoon and Burma's second-largest city, Mandalay, had been besieged in their monasteries and penned in by locked gates.

The violence has killed nine people and injured 31, according to an account read on official Burmese television. Exile groups said Friday they had received information indicating that the death toll was considerably higher. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he believed the figure was "far greater," though he did not offer an estimate. The U.S. Campaign for Burma, a Washington-based dissident group, said about 200 protesters were killed. That number could not be verified.

With the flow of information sharply curtailed and most foreign correspondents barred from the country, activist groups said satellite imagery could play a role in determining what was happening. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, which released a report Friday on long-standing military campaigns against ethnic rebels in outlying areas, said satellites also are being deployed to collect images of troop movements in such centers of the current uprising as Rangoon and Mandalay.

"The images, if they come through, will be one of the few ways to understand the level of the military deployment in these cities," said Lars Bromley, project director for the nonprofit group.

Protesters also took to the streets in Mandalay on Friday, exiles said, but the size of the protest was not known. Soe Aung, a spokesman for the National Council of the Union of Burma, an exile organization based in Thailand, said his group had heard reports of dissent in the armed forces, with some soldiers refusing orders to fire on protesters in Mandalay. But he stressed that the reports were unconfirmed, citing the lack of reliable communications.

Demonstrators said some of the weapons fire Thursday seemed to have come not from soldiers and police in the streets, but from nearby buildings, suggesting the military was using snipers to pick off protest leaders, Soe Aung said.

Video images from Burma on Thursday showed a preponderance of lay political activists among the demonstrators, rather than monks who had previously led the rallies.

"The monks have done their job, and now we must carry on with the movement," one student leader in downtown Rangoon told Agence France-Presse on Friday, according to the news agency's Web site.

The new Japanese prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda, said in Tokyo that his government expected a full explanation from the ruling junta on what led to the killing of a Japanese cameraman who was among those acknowledged shot during clashes Thursday. Kenji Nagai, 50, who was shooting for the APFN News video agency, was recorded by another cameraman being taken away by soldiers before being shot.

Southeast Asian diplomats were called in by Burmese authorities Friday. The envoys told news agency reporters in Rangoon that they were informed the military felt it had neutralized the monks' anti-government network with arrests. The junta's security forces planned to turn their attention next to lay political activists and pro-democracy politicians in the National League for Democracy, the party headed by Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, they said.

Some of her followers have been arrested, exile sources reported. Suu Kyi, 62, has been under house arrest for most of the past 18 years because of her demands for political change.

Sympathizers with the struggle underway in Burma staged rallies Friday across Asia, as well as in Washington and New York, condemning the junta's crackdown and demanding stronger international action against a military leadership known for brutality. The science association showed evidence of village destruction, forced relocations and a growing military presence at 25 sites across eastern Burma.

On the diplomatic level, a special U.N. envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, flew to Singapore to pick up a visa and was expected to confer with Burma's military leaders this weekend. Foreign ministers of countries belonging to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, meeting Thursday at the United Nations, condemned the junta's tactics and said they placed great stock in Gambari's mission.

But Kraisake Choonhavan, a former Thai senator and member of an ASEAN parliamentary caucus on Burma, noted that Gambari has already been to Burma and obtained only what turned out to be vain promises of reconciliation and liberalization. "Gambari has been given assurances before," he said at a news conference in Bangkok.

Singapore's ambassador to the United States, Heng Chee Chan, expressed hope but also caution regarding the U.N. envoy's mission.

"Once Gambari is in, maybe the crackdown will not be as severe," she said, "but it is not going to end. Where this dialogue between Gambari and the leadership will lead to is anybody's guess."