Myanmar: Military Fires on Protesters

Monks Protest in Myanmar [NOT MY IMAGE]

CNN.com:

Myanmar’s security forces fired automatic weapons into a crowd of anti-government protesters, after attempts to clear them from the streets on Yangon, reports said Thursday.

A Japanese national was shot and killed by the military junta, the Japanese Foreign Ministry told CNN.

There are claims by dissidents that four protesters were shot on Thursday.

At least 100 monks were beaten and arrested by soldiers, reports say.

And here’s some background on the situation from The Economist (“How Myanmar’s people rose up against its regime—and the regime rose up against its people“):

THERE are reckoned to be 400,000 monks in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), about the same as the number of soldiers under the ruling junta’s command. The soldiers have the guns. The monks have the public’s support and, judging from the past fortnight’s protests, the courage and determination to defy the regime. But Myanmar’s tragic recent history suggests that when an immovable junta meets unstoppable protests, much blood is spilled.

In the last pro-democracy protests on this scale, in 1988, it took several rounds of massacres before the demonstrations finally subsided, leaving the regime as strong as ever. By Thursday September 27th, with a crackdown under way, and the first deaths from clashes with security forces, it seemed hard to imagine that things would be very different this time.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *