Eyewitness Accounts from Burma
September/October 2007
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September 30, 2007
from Foundation for the People of Burma staff member:
Dear BPF'ers,
Thanks so much for all your time, concern, planning and commitment to showing your solidarity with the monks and all people in Burma that face extreme repression daily. I just flew from Rangoon to Chiang Mai yesterday. Seeing and hearing monks and laypersons take to the streets, despite all the risks they know are real, has been a deeply touching experience for me. Having worked with people from Burma since 1999, it was unbelievable to hear people on the streets talking about oppression, censorship and militarization so openly. I am trying to get all the reports of actions such as the walk in San Francisco and protests in other cities into my friends so that they are aware that the world is behind them.
A quick story from the many things I have seen over the past week: Watching from the balcony of a friends house near the Sule Pagoda in downtown Rangoon, a row of armed police forces backed up by at least one row of armed military boys (and I mean boys) faced the crowds as they gathered shortly after noon. Thousands of people were coming together, mostly men but also young women, old women, and some families. In front of the lines of armed forces, pro-freedom, pro-justice activist sat down on the pavement as an act of humility. As to not frighten the armed forces they remained coordinated in their chants and songs. One melodious chant speaks of ending human suffering across the entirety of the globe, sending blessings to all and metta to your neighbors. People remained sitting and bowed in obeisance, sarcastically or not, toward the soldiers. The crowd was peaceful and full of emotion as they waited for the monks, who unbeknownst to the crowd were being blockaded, tear-gassed and beaten in front of Burma’s most auspicious pagoda at Shwedagon. Soon thereafter, shots were fired into the crowd and people ran for their lives as their buoyed hopes of liberation sank.
Such incidences were happening in small pockets all over the city.
September 28, 2007
A dispatch received from someone with a relative in Yangon (Rangoon), via Richard Reoch of Shambhala:
We just got phone call with our sister living in Yangon about a few hours ago. We saw on BBC world, saying that 200 monks were arrested. The true picture is far worse. For one instance, the monastery at an obscure neighborhood of Yangon, called Ngwe Kyar Yan (on Wei-za-yan-tar Road, Yangon) had been raided early this morning.
A troop of lone-tein (riot police comprised of paid thugs) protected by the military trucks, raided the monastery with 200 studying monks. They systematically ordered all the monks to line up and banged and crushed each one's head against the brick wall of the monastery. One by one, the peaceful, non resisting monks, fell to the ground, screaming in pain. Then, they tore off the red robes and threw them all in the military trucks (like rice bags) and took the bodies away.
The head monk of the monastery, was tied up in the middle of the monastery, tortured , bludgeoned, and later died the same day, today. Tens of thousands of people gathered outside the monastery, warded off by troops with bayoneted rifles, unable to help their helpless monks being slaughtered inside the monastery. Their every try to forge ahead was met with the bayonets.
When all is done, only 10 out of 200 remained alive, hiding in the monastery. Blood stained everywhere on the walls and floors of the monastery.
Please tell your audience of the full extent of the fate of the monks please please !!!!!!!!!!!!
'Arrested' is not enough expression. They have been bludgeoned to death !!!!!!
(Name withheld to protect the identity)
Hong Kong
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