ninme

Times Online - Exclusive from Rangoon: blood, fear and courage amid the junta’s deadly force
Our correspondent experiences the brutal force of the backlash against pro-democracy protesters

The picture is captioned:

This is the moment that Kenji Nagai, 50, who was covering the Rangoon protests for the Japanese news agency APF News, was shot. He died later in hospital

I don’t think the Japanese are going to be too terribly happy about that.

Burma’s generals silenced the Buddhist monks this morning. For a week and a half, they had been on the streets of Rangoon in their tens of thousands, and their angry calm gave courage to the people around them.

But overnight, they were beaten, shot and arrested, and locked in their monasteries. Handfuls of them were visible today on the streets – two or three brave individuals, a dozen at most, but nothing to approach the mass marches of the previous nine days. Everyone felt their absence.

You could see it in the faces of the civilian demonstrators who took to the streets anyway, in defiance of the official warnings. You could see it, too, in the swagger of the riot police, banging their batons menacingly on their shields as they advanced.

The monks were moral shields; without them the marchers had lost a lucky charm. They felt less like crusaders for justice and more like what they resembled – scared, angry kids in T-shirts facing well-drilled troops with automatic weapons.

They stood their ground as long as they dared, too long for some of them – according to patchy reports at least nine people had been killed and eleven injured, including a Japanese journalist with the video and photo agency APF News.

But, so far at least, this is not yet a repeat of the massacres of 1988, when 3,000 were mown down on the streets. The junta is showing patience and restraint, it is plotting its moves step-by-step, and it is displaying a subtle and malignant cunning.

In the Mwe Kya Kan pagoda, in the South Okkala district of Rangoon, it began at 2am, but seven hours later the evidence was plain to see – a dozen thick patches of congealing blood and human tissue splashed about the yard.

The windows of the monks’ dormitories were smashed jaggedly by the impact of rubber bullets – hard, round spheres fired from green cartridges which the monks had carefully gathered up and put on display. Inside everything had been smashed – the thin plywood walls, the monks’ plaster statues of the Buddha – and the mattresses were soaked with blood.

So much for superstitious military leadership.

Update:

The Times - Daylight on Dictatorship
China, Japan and Asean must push for restraint in Burma

(Not Times Online, so written previous to the above)

Sharper and more insistent words must come from China. Burma’s largest trading partner would be acutely embarrassed by public accusations that it is bankrolling the generals, especially if their crackdown produces bloodshed. The Olympics give the West an unusual chance to shame China into action. No one, though, should expect a public dressing-down. That is not the way of Chinese diplomacy, nor is it likely to produce results in a region where face is all-important. Japan understands this and, like China, is courting Burma for its energy reserves. The Japanese have also historically had a warm sentiment for a country seen as quietly friendly to them. It is a sentiment that should be used to shield the Burmese people from further repression.

Hmm.

Update II:

I noticed this too:

The Corner - Political Correctness and Taking Sides. Jonathan Foreman

Linguistically at least the New York Times seems to be standing shoulder to shoulder with China and India in support of the Burmese junta as its troops gun down monks and unarmed demonstrators. Apparently the Grey Lady’s style-meisters still believe it is politically correct to follow the whim of the country’s vicious military kleptocracy and refer to Burma as Myanmar, and its capital as Yangon instead of Rangoon. Never mind that most English speaking Burmese use the traditional names. Or that much of the international media, and certainly the British media (including the generally PC BBC) are quietly going back to the country’s real name.

That today on the radio I think I heard them say Myanmar, and, since I get most of my news from the British, it was the first time I’d heard the word used. And I thought, “Okay, if the entire British Press, including the Beeb, is saying Burma, why on earth is this person…”

And then I trailed off and gritted my teeth.