Myanmar forces raid monasteries, open fire on protesters

FE Team | Published: September 28, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

YANGON, SEPT 27 (AP): Myanmar security forces raided at least two Buddhist monasteries and arrested dissidents after opening fire on pro-democracy protesters led by monks in Yangon and leaving at least one dead, sources said Thursday.
About 100 Buddhist monks were arrested when security forces raided a monastery in eastern Yangon overnight, said AFP.
Windows at the Ngwekyaryan monastery were shattered, with shards of glass and spent bullet casings littering the ground, witnesses said.
Overnight, they arrested Myint Thein, the spokesman for opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's political party, family members said. Unconfirmed reports said other members of the National League for Democracy were also arrested.
At least two monasteries, hotbeds of the pro-democracy movement, were raided by security personnel during the night but details were not immediately available, two sources close to the scene said on condition an anonymity, fearing reprisals from the government.
The government said one man was killed when police opened fire during the ninth consecutive day of demonstrations, but dissidents outside Myanmar reported receiving news of up to eight deaths. Some reports said the dead included monks, who are widely revered in Myanmar, and the emergence of such martyr figures could stoke public anger against the regime and escalate the violence.
The United States and the European Union issued a joint statement decrying the assault on peaceful demonstrators and calling on the junta to open talks with democracy activists, including detained opposition leader Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate.
"What's going on in Burma is outrageous," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who was sending a special envoy to the region, urged the junta "to exercise utmost restraint toward the peaceful demonstrations taking place, as such action can only undermine the prospects for peace, prosperity and stability in Myanmar."
The junta issued an edict late Tuesday banning gatherings of more than five people, but the order was ignored by democracy activists and the public alike Wednesday.
Police fired warning shots and tear gas trying to scatter the demonstrators, and dragged monks into army trucks - the first mass arrests since protests against the military dictatorship erupted Aug. 19.
AFP adds from Beijing: A senior US envoy said here Thursday China must use its influence with Myanmar's rulers to stop them from cracking down violently on anti- government protesters there.
"The use of force will solve nothing, this is about arriving at a political arrangement," Christopher Hill, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, told reporters.
China's UN envoy Wang Guangya said in New York Wednesday that sanctions against Myanmar's military rulers would not be "helpful."
But China's foreign ministry has urged Myanmar's government to bring about stability, and diplomatic sources in Brussels told AFP that the Chinese have privately advised the junta "not to over-react."
Hill said the United States, China and all countries need to consult closely and do what they could to pressure Myanmar's government not to use violence.