Word: burma
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...Peaceful demonstrations can easily be crushed by weapons. Only violence will bring down Burma's military regime. The United Nations should arm and train the Burmese people to fight the ruthless regime on condition that once they have triumphed, their weapons will all be destroyed under the supervision of the U.N. and the monks. Suraj Bandaje, Palmerston North, New Zealand...
...much of late September, the road to the eastern gateway of Rangoon's revered Shwedagon pagoda was a sea of maroon and saffron robes, as hundreds of Buddhist monks gathered to march in protest against Burma's military government...
...monks around Shwedagon, including some nuns, were bundled onto trucks and taken away. When asked where the monks had gone, one 30-year-old man who was at Shwedagon in the early days of the protests puts his wrists together in the sign of locked handcuffs. According to Burma's state-run paper, The New Light of Myanmar, raids on 18 monasteries netted the authorities some 513 monks, one novice, 167 men and 30 women. The monks were summarily defrocked and interrogated and those found to be innocent were re-ordained and sent back to their monasteries. While the paper...
...head off such an outcome, the generals are waging a propaganda war to win back Burmese hearts and minds. Burma's state-run television broadcast footage over the weekend of military officers and their wives presenting gifts of rice and cash to an assembly of forlorn-looking, elderly Buddhist patriarchs in Rangoon. On Sunday, The New Light of Myanmar assured readers that the military was only targeting "bogus" monks and demonstration leaders with its purges. "Although authorities and security members pay respects to the real monks, they had to take action against those bogus monks trying to tarnish the image...
...many, even some members of Burma's own oppressive security forces, remain unconvinced. On Monday evening, a 26-year-old member of the plainclothes security apparatus knelt to pay a final homage to the Buddha at Shwedagon before fleeing for the Thai border. The officer had taken part in the nighttime roundup of monks, and it still weighed heavily on his conscience. "I have had enough. I have to leave," he said as he rose from his knees and started his journey to the border. Still, the nightly roundup of suspects continues under the darkness of a 10 p.m. curfew...