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Headlines : Human RightsOver 100,000 flood Myanmar streets in largest protest in decades
In a surprise move on Saturday, armed police allowed about 2,000 monks and civilians to pray outside the home of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, long the face of resistance to the generals, who have ruled here since 1962.
Big changes are afoot in Burma. Political consciousness is seeping onto the streets, Buddhist monks are linking up with partisans of the nation’s legitimately elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Gordon Johndroe of the U.S. government says that “We are consulting with allies and friends in the regions on ways to encourage dialogue between the regime and those seeking freedom.”
Given recent signs of support for the brutal junta, this could mean many things. Let’s hope the Bush administration and the Chinese stay out of this.
[Posted By Szamko]Republished from AFP
More than 100,000 people flooded the streets of Myanmar’s biggest city Monday, joining Buddhist monks in the strongest show of dissent against the ruling generals in nearly two decades.
The enormous show of strength drew a swift threat from the military government to “take action” against the monks, even as world leaders urged the junta to show restraint in dealing with the protests.
Two major marches snaked their way through the nation’s commercial capital led by robed monks chanting prayers of peace and compassion, witnesses said.
Some of the people marched through the rain under a banner reading: “This is a peaceful mass movement.” Others had tears in their eyes.
The protests lasted nearly five hours, ending with prayers at pagodas before the crowds returned to their homes.
Posted by Szamko
Just tries to tell the truth.
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A source told Reuters on Tuesday that Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the opposition National League for Democracy, was moved on Sunday to a prison from her home, where she has been held under house arrest.
The London-based Burma Campaign UK said it had a received reports of soldiers ordered to shave their heads, apparently to pose as monks and infiltrate the protests.
“They would start rioting or attacking police, providing the regime with a pretext for a brutal crackdown on protesters,” the group said.
[A] dusk-to-dawn curfew [has been imposed] in the former capital Yangon and the second biggest city of Mandalay
Burning down Myanmar’s Internet firewall
YANGON – Myanmar maintains some of the world’s most restrictive Internet controls, including government-administered blocks on foreign news sites and the use of popular e-mail services. But when politically sensitive fuel-price protests broke out last month in the old capital city Yangon, government censors proved powerless to stop the outflow of information and images over the Internet to the outside world.
State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) authorities have increased their efforts to curb local and foreign media coverage of the protests and their heavy-handed response against demonstrators. Pro-government thugs have been deployed to harass and intimidate local journalists and camera-carriers, some of whom have had their mobile-phone services cut.
Authorities initially ordered a blackout on all local media coverage of the protests and have since crafted and placed articles in mouthpiece media criticizing the protest leaders they have detained. But the government is losing decidedly its most crucial censorship battle: over the Internet. Despite government bans, journalists and dissidents continue to send information and video clips of the protests over the Internet to foreign-based news organizations.
Popular video-sharing website YouTube is flush with footage of the protests posted by citizen journalists under Burmese names, including one posting by a user who apparently uses the same name as SPDC leader General Than Shwe.