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YANGON: Myanmar moved Wednesday to crush the mass
rallies that have erupted nationwide against the military regime, as
security forces fired tear gas and warning shots, and beat
protesters in the streets.
Even as witnesses reported dozens
of people being hauled away by police, however, protest marches
continued in what has become the strongest show of dissent against
the ruling generals in 20 years.
Witnesses said thousands of
onlookers cheered as around 1,000 Buddhist monks shrugged off the
heavy presence of soldiers and police and kept marching toward the
center of the main city of Yangon.
The crowd roared approval for the
monks and shouted at security forces: “You are fools! You are
fools!”
Police and troops then fired a
volley of warning shots and tear gas to try to break up the march,
witnesses said.
It was one of several
demonstrations in the city as thousands of monks and their
supporters ignored a decree from the regime, which has ruled Myanmar
with an iron grip for decades that the days of mass protests had to
stop.
Earlier, police baton-charged
hundreds of students and monks who had defied the order to gather at
Myanmar’s holiest shrine, the Shwedagon Pagoda.
Dozens of protesters, including
some of the revered monks who have turned the spark of public anger
into a nationwide movement in just a few days, were detained during
the clashes in the main city of Yangon.
Another march headed toward the
house of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been held
there under house arrest for most of the last 18 years. As they
walked, they urged a crowd along the streets to remain calm.
“We monks will do this,” they
called to onlookers as a few dozen soldiers followed them in trucks.
“Please don’t join us. Don’t do anything violent.”
There have been fears of a repeat
of 1988, the last time huge demonstrations emerged in the streets of
Myanmar to challenge the junta’s iron rule. Security forces opened
fire, and around 3,000 people were killed.
It was not immediately known if
authorities were cracking down elsewhere Wednesday but the protests
have become nationwide. State media said there have been rallies in
seven of the country’s 14 provinces.
In the western city of Sittwe,
about 15,000 monks and people marched on Tuesday and a resident told
AFP another march was planned for Wednesday.
Troops were deployed outside the
headquarters of Aung San Suu Kyi’s party. Pro-democracy politician
Win Naing and the country’s most famous comedian Zaganar were
arrested for helping the protests.
Hundreds of people began lining
the streets to cheer them on. After the monks joined the movement,
the numbers of protesters swelled. Around 100,000 people marched in
Yangon on Monday and Tuesday.
The international community has
urged the junta to show restraint. China, one of Myanmar’s main
allies, has said it wants stability in the country but said it would
not intervene.
On the opening day of the
192-member assembly summit, US President George W. Bush unveiled new
sanctions on Myanmar’s ruling junta and urged global pressure for
democratic reforms to end the junta’s decades old “reign of
fear.”
The European Union said Wednesday
it is ready to follow the United States in ordering tougher
sanctions against the military junta.
But there are divisions over the
effectiveness of sanctions with China refusing to put overt pressure
on its neighbor and close ally, and even Australia saying it will
not order new action.
--AFP
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