Myanmar crowds taunt troops as crackdown draws outrage
Crowds taunted soldiers and police who barricaded central Yangon on Friday to prevent more mass protests against Myanmar`s 45 years of military rule and deepening economic hardship.
In a potentially deadly game of cat and mouse, groups of several hundred men and women yelled in English "F--- you, army. We only want democracy," provoking charges by small bands of soldiers.
The protesters disappeared into a warren of narrow side streets and re-emerged elsewhere to resume their barrage of abuse in a city of people terrified of a repeat of 1988, when the army killed an estimated 3,000 people in crushing an uprising.
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.
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.
One of those killed on Thursday was Japanese photographer Kenji Nagai, 50, shot point-blank -- according to video footage -- when soldiers charged crowds near Sule Pagoda, the focus of more than a week of protests and now deep inside the sealed off area.
Japan said it would decide whether to suspend humanitarian aid for Myanmar after investigating the killing.
INTERNATIONAL FURY
Hundreds of monks were detained in army raids in the early hours of Thursday on about 10 Yangon monasteries seen as leading the protests.
One monk was killed in the raids, taking to six the number of monks known to have died in the crackdown, a clergy source said.
But monks told foreign Burmese-language broadcasters they were not going to give up. Speaking anonymously, they said they had formed a "united front" of clergy, students and activists to continue the struggle.
The junta`s violent response to the peaceful demonstrations, despite worldwide calls for restraint, drew a cacophony of diplomatic protests.
Even China, the closest the generals have to a friend, said it was "extremely concerned" and called for restraint.
The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), one of the few international groupings to have Myanmar as a member, went much further.
ASEAN, which works by consensus and hardly ever criticizes a member directly, expressed "revulsion" at the crackdown.
There were protests across Asia as the Myanmar generals appeared to have cut off public access to the Internet through which news of their bloody crackdown in the isolated country reached the rest of the world.
In Canberra, some protesters were detained after a group of around 100 clashed with police while trying to charge the Myanmar embassy there. There were also protests outside Myanmar embassies in Taiwan, Bangkok, Manila, Jakarta and Phnom Penh.
In one small concession, the military agreed to admit U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari and diplomatic sources in Yangon said he was expected to arrive from Singapore on Saturday.
The White House said U.S. President George W. Bush had thanked China for helping win consent to the visit by Gambari, who has been charged with pressing for an end to the harshest crackdown since 1988.
The junta told diplomats summoned to its new jungle capital, Naypyidaw, that it was "committed to showing restraint in its response to the provocations," one of those present said.
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