US official urges Myanmar not to use force against protesters

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN,

AP

Posted: 2007-09-27 03:57:34

BEIJING (AP) – A top U.S. diplomat called on Myanmar ’s military leaders Thursday to open a dialogue with peaceful protesters in the reclusive Asian nation and urged China to do what it can to prevent further bloodshed.

“We all need to agree on the fact that the Burmese government has got to stop thinking that this can be solved by police and military, and start thinking about the need for genuine reconciliation with the broad spectrum of political activists in the country,” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill told reporters in Beijing.

Hill’s comments came after forces in Myanmar opened fire on anti-government protesters in the center of the country’s largest city, Yangon, killing at least one person. Dissident groups have claimed the casualty count is higher, with as many as five people killed, including Buddhist monks who have led the protest marches.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters in Washington on Wednesday that Hill plans to discuss the situation in Myanmar with Chinese officials on the sidelines of six-nation North Korean nuclear disarmament talks this week in Beijing.

“It seems that people are sending a very clear message to the regime there that they need to begin a process of genuine dialogue and above all refrain from any use of force,” Hill said. “Use of force will solve nothing.”

Hill declined to say whether Washington would request specific measures from Beijing, Myanmar’s chief economic and political supporter.

“I think it’s something that all countries need to be concerned about especially to use the influence that countries have to prevent the Burmese authorities from cracking down on these peaceful protests,” Hill said.

“We need to be in close consultation on this,” he added.

The current protests began Aug. 19 after the government hiked fuel prices in one of Asia’s poorest countries. But they are based in deep-rooted dissatisfaction with the repressive military rule that has gripped the country since 1962. The protests were faltering when the monks took the lead last week.

China has come under increasing international pressure to use its influence with Myanmar’s ruling junta to urge the regime to show restraint toward the protesters. Overcoming its initial reluctance, China on Wednesday agreed to the issuing of a statement of concern by the U.N. Security Council over the violent crackdown that urged the military regime to let in a special envoy.

Earlier Thursday, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said his government would press China to urge the regime in Myanmar to end its violent repression.

“The country that can exert most pressure on Burma is China and we will be encouraging – and we are doing it already – encouraging China to exert a positive influence on the regime to encourage it to hold back on the repression and to adopt a more accommodating attitude toward the people,” Howard told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

China, along with Russia, says the situation in Myanmar is an internal affair and has ruled out direct intervention. Following Wednesday’s Security Council meeting, China’s U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya told reporters the most important thing is for Myanmar authorities to “restore stability,” and to get the special envoy into the country as soon as possible.

“China is a neighbor to Myanmar, so we more than anyone else wish to see that Myanmar will achieve stability, national reconciliation, and we want to see them making progress on the road of democratization,” he said. “We hope that the government and people there could just sort out their differences.”

In January, China and Russia cast a rare double veto on a U.S.-sponsored resolution calling on Myanmar’s military government to release all political prisoners, speed up progress toward democracy and stop attacks against ethnic minorities.

Despite such moves, diplomats in Beijing say China has gently urged the junta to ease its hard-line stance against opposition groups.

A senior Chinese official asked junta envoys this month to reconcile with pro-democracy forces.

China arranged a low-key meeting in Beijing between Myanmar and U.S. State Department envoys to discuss the release of the leading opposition figure, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been detained for 12 of the past 18 years.

The moves reflect cautious steps by Beijing toward a more active diplomacy, particularly toward countries on its borders such as North Korea .

China may also be concerned about damage to its global image through association with a repressive regime as it hosts next year’s Olympics in Beijing.

Pressure from foreign governments and international activist groups have already spurred Beijing to pare back lending to Zimbabwe  and persuade Sudan to accept a U.N. peacekeeping force for Darfur.
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Asian diplomat: Nobel laureate Suu Khi remain in Yangon residence, not imprisoned

AP

Posted: 2007-09-27 03:51:28

YANGON, Myanmar  (AP) – An Asian diplomat told The Associated Press on Thursday that Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi remains in her Yangon home, contrary to rumors that she had been imprisoned.

The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, said the opposition leader was not taken to Yangon’s notorious Insein prison – as some had feared – but remains in the house where she has been detained for nearly 12 years.

The diplomat said that junta had deployed more security forces around Suu Kyi’s house and on the road leading to her residential compound and that more than 100 soldiers were now inside the compound.

“The sign of increasing security forces make me confident that she is still there,” the diplomat said. He said others told him that they had seen the diminutive opposition leader in her home Wednesday night.

The diplomat also said flyers were spreading around the nation’s largest city of Yangon on Thursday morning encouraging more civilians to join the protest.

There was a fleeting appearance on Saturday of Suu Kyi at the gate of her residence when she appeared to pay respect to the thousands of monks who marched past her home, demanding her release and protesting against increased fuel and food prices.

Suu Kyi, 62, is the leader of the National League for Democracy party, which won a 1990 general election but was not allowed to take power by the military. She has been under detention continuously since May 2003.
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Myanmar’s junta arrests monks, NLD officials in Yangon+

AP

Posted: 2007-09-27 03:50:06

YANGON, Sept. 27 (Kyodo) – (UPDATING WITH REPORT OF NLD ARRESTS, JAPANESE COMMENT)

As many as 200 monks and two officials of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy were arrested late Wednesday and early Thursday when Myanmar  junta authorities raided monasteries, witnesses said.

They said the army raided two monasteries early Thursday morning, violently arresting scores of monks.

At least 100 monks were arrested when the army raided the Moe Kaung and Ngwe Kyar Yan monasteries in northwest Yangon, the witnesses told Kyodo News.

Later Thursday, NLD sources said party spokesman Myint Thein and central executive committee member Hla Pe were taken away from their homes late Wednesday night.

The raids and arrests follow nine straight days of mass protests, led by Buddhist monks but joined by thousands of ordinary citizens as well, in Yangon and other cities across the country calling for the ruling generals to step down and “return power to the people.”

The protest marches, which had been peaceful, turned uglier Wednesday, with the junta admitting at least one person was killed and three wounded when police and soldiers used teargas and fired warning shots over a crowd.

Other reports have put the death toll as high as five.

Meanwhile, in Australia on Thursday, Prime Minister John Howard described the junta as a “loathsome regime” in announcing a tightening of sanctions on Myanmar.

Speaking in response to reports at least three people had been killed Wednesday by Myanmar’s security forces amid mass protests against the ruling generals, Howard said Australia will tighten visa bans and consider imposing financial sanctions on junta officials.

The decision follows an announcement by the United States earlier this week that it was tightening visa and economic sanctions on Myanmar.

Although Australia conducts virtually no trade with Myanmar, it has had visa and defense export bans in place for several years.

In addition to the sanctions, Howard said Australia will continue to call on China to exert pressure on its neighbor.

“The country that can exert most pressure on Burma is China and we will be encouraging, and we are doing it already, encouraging China to exert a positive influence on the regime,” he said.

In Tokyo on Thursday, the Japanese government’s top spokesman urged Myanmar not to resort to violence in the junta’s crackdown on protests in the country.

“It is extremely regrettable. We would request that they don’t high-handedly resort to violence,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said at a press conference. “We strongly expect that the situation will be resolved through dialogue.”

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Monks Apprehended as Protests Go On

By Aung Hla Tun,

Reuters

Posted: 2007-09-27 04:33:19

Filed Under: World News

YANGON, Myanmar  (Sept. 27) — Protesters returned to the streets of central Yangon on Thursday, undeterred by reports of security forces killing several monks as Myanmar ’s generals tried to end the biggest anti-military uprising in nearly 20 years.

Photo Gallery: Crackdown in Myanmar

Aung Hla Tun, Reuters

Two Buddhist monks chant prayers in front of onlookers along the sidewalk near the Sule shrine in Yangon Thursday. Myanmar’s generals started raiding monasteries on Thursday in an effort to quell anti-government protests.

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People gathered around four monks standing on a traffic island in the middle of a four-lane highway leading to Sule Pagoda — the end-point of mass demonstrations this week and now locked.

More than 1,000 people surrounded them as riot police watched from behind their shields, witnesses said.

It was not immediately clear how many more of the revered, maroon-robed monks who have led the mass protests would turn up or how many ordinary people would dare demonstrate after pre-dawn raids on rebellious monasteries.

Ignoring increasingly desperate international calls for restraint, the generals sent troops into monasteries in Yangon and elsewhere and took several hundred monks away in trucks.

But fears grew of a repeat of 1988, when troops killed an estimated 3,000 people in the ruthless suppression of a nationwide uprising.

As security forces set up barbed-wire barricades at major junctions in central Yangon, monks on Burmese-language foreign radio stations urged their comrades not to surrender.

“We would like to call on the student monks to keep on struggling peacefully,” one protest leader said on the BBC service. “Five monks have sacrificed their lives for our religion.”

Barricades sealed off the gilded Shwedagon Pagoda, the country’s holiest shrine and start-point for more than a week of monk-led protests. The only people were a woman selling fruit and German tourists trying to see the sights, a witness said.

Troops and police also stationed seven fire engines to be used as water cannons near the Sule Pagoda. The gates of the downtown temple were locked, and armed police waited inside.

RAIDS FUEL ANGER

The monastery raids were likely to inflame the former Burma’s 56 million people, already fed up with 45 years of unbroken military rule and economic hardship.

“Doors of the monasteries were broken, things were ransacked and taken away,” a witness said. “It’s like a living hell seeing the monasteries raided and the monks treated cruelly.”

People living near Yangon monasteries, the revered moral centre of the Buddhist nation, reported that at least 500 monks were taken away in army trucks.

They were taken during the second night of a dusk-to-dawn curfew from monasteries believed to be coordinating protest marches, monks said.

Several monasteries in the remote northeast were also hit and monks carted off. “Only two or three sick monks were left behind,” a person living hear the Ngwe Kyaryan monastery said.

Facing the most serious challenge to its authority since 1988, the junta admitted one man was killed and three wounded when soldiers fired warning shots and tear gas at crowds on Wednesday.

Protest leaders said at least five monks were killed as soldiers and riot police tried to disperse the biggest crowds in a month of marches against grinding poverty.

Overnight, police arrested two senior members of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), the party’s spokesman said. Two opposition politicians from other parties were also detained.

CHINA SAYS “NO” TO SANCTIONS

The international outrage at Wednesday’s use of warning shots, tear gas and baton charges against monks and unarmed civilians was loud by any standards.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice  called it a “tragedy” and urged the generals to allow a U.N. envoy to visit and meet detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

“The regime has reacted brutally to people who were simply protesting peacefully,” Rice said on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he would dispatch special envoy Ibrahim Gambari to Southeast Asia in hope the hope that the generals would let him in.

However, in a sign of rifts within the international community at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council in New York, China ruled out sanctions or an official condemnation of the use of force.

History suggests the junta will not be moved by threats from France and Britain — former imperial powers — that leaders would be held responsible for bloodshed. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the “age of impunity” was over.

The United States and the 27-nation European Union  called on the generals to start a dialogue with pro-democracy leaders, including Nobel laureate Suu Kyi, and ethnic minority groups.

Foreign ministers of the Group of Eight industrial nations agreed on a similar formula but without a call for sanctions, in deference to Russia.

Participants said Rice and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whose country has sided with China in blocking U.N. moves against Myanmar , clashed over the sanctions issue.

Washington and Paris called on China to use its influence to convince the junta to stop the crackdown.

Diplomats say China has privately been speaking with the Myanmar generals to convey international concern, but Beijing has so far refrained from any public criticism.