Myanmar Protests, Violence & World Outrage

(Yangon, Myanmar) Yesterday and today, crowds taunted as police and soldiers strived to stop the demonstrations prompted by a steep rise in fuel prices. Groups of several hundred protesters shouted in English "F**k you, Army. We only want democracy!" Squads of soldiers charged the demonstrators.

Several shots were fired, but there was no immediate word of more casualties a day after troops swept protesters out of the city centre, giving them 10 minutes to leave or risk being shot, then pursued knots of demonstrators through the city.

 
Photo left: Man with camera as soldier approaches. Photo right: Man lies motionless afterward. Believed to be Japanese photographer Kenji Nagai, 50, shot point-blank.

There was no sign of the monks who turned what started as small protests against shock fuel price rises last month into a mass uprising by lending their huge moral weight to demonstrations against the junta.

Troops fired on several crowds on Thursday, and the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission said eight people were shot dead in a single incident in the northeastern Yangon district of South Okkalapa.

Loudspeaker trucks toured South Okkalapa on Friday, announcing a four-hour extension in the area to the overnight curfew that was imposed on Yangon and the second city of Mandalay on Tuesday, witnesses said.

State-run television admitted that nine people had been killed in Yangon, but Australian Ambassador Bob Davis told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio that should be multiplied several times to get the real figure.

At least six Buddhist monks are believed to have been killed. Others have vowed not to give up. They said they had formed a "united front" of clergy, students and activists to continue the struggle.

Myanmar generals have cut telephone and Internet communications. News reports are intermittent. At the Thailand-Myanmar border, a surge of Burmese troops arrived to guard against an incoming flood of people wanting to join the protests. If unrest continues, the troops are staged to close the border. Thai fishing trawlers have been warned not to encroach in Myanmar's waters.

From Bangkok Post:

It seems clear that the entire world, China especially, is standing by, holding the coats of the Burmese dictators while they mop the Burmese floor with the blood of the Burmese clergy and that of the people of Burma.

The bloody crackdown has prompted outrage across Asia and Myanmar's embassies are being thronged with protesters, notably Taiwan, Bangkok, Manila, Jakarta, Phnom Penh and Canberra.