YANGON, Myanmar, Oct. 17 — Worshipers have begun returning to the Shwedagon Pagoda, the towering gold-coated landmark that had been cordoned off with soldiers and barbed wire only days before.
At the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon. The government just ended a ban on gatherings of more than five people there.
Myanmar Government Lifts Curfew (October 20, 2007)
But at its four entrances, pictures of what appeared to be detainees, their faces harried or bruised from beatings, were posted as a warning. Soldiers in green uniforms lurked in the shade with their rifles. The surrounding area looked deserted, with the monks having fled and many shop workers, witnesses to the bloody crackdown, hauled away for questioning or told to relocate.
An ominous calm has settled here, less than a month after the military junta crushed an uprising for democracy led by the nation’s revered monks. People have quietly returned to the squalor and inflation that brought them to the streets in protest. There are even suggestions of peace: young couples embracing under trees around scenic Kandawgyi Lake; music from a restaurant drifting across the placid water.
But beneath the surface, anger, uncertainty, hopelessness — and above all, fear of the junta — prevail.
“It’s not peace you see here, it’s silence; it’s a forced silence,” said a 46-year-old writer who joined last month’s protests in Yangon and was now on the run, carrying with him a worn copy of his favorite book, George Orwell’s “1984.” “We are the military’s slaves. We want democracy. We want to wait no longer. But we are afraid of their guns.”
After the government shut down Internet access and denied visas for outside journalists, keeping much of the world at bay, terror continued to rage through Yangon, the main city, for days, according to witnesses and dissidents here. Soldiers raided homes and monasteries to arrest demonstrators, witnesses said, using pictures taken by government informers during the protests.
“Keep your pen and piece of paper in your pocket; there are spies everywhere,” said a 62-year-old retired man in Yangon’s Chaukktatgyi Pagoda. “Please don’t tell anyone my name. Big trouble for me.”
On the campus of the defunct Government Technology Institute, one of the several detention centers believed to hold people arrested during the nighttime raids, soldiers tore off monks’ saffron robes, beat them and made them “jump like frogs,” said a 60-year-old monk.
Even now, weeks after the initial crackdown, “neighbors are looking for their family members missing,” said a 33-year-old businesswoman. She added: “We have never seen anything like this in our history. Even the British colonial rule, they stopped chasing people when they ran into a monastery.”
By perpetrating what most Burmese felt was unthinkable — the beating and killing of monks — the ruling generals proved that they would stop at nothing to keep their grip on power. People were again cowed into subjugation. Now dissidents worry that the world, after its initial uproar, will again leave the Burmese people to cope with the junta on their own.
“We want to explode our feelings, but if we do, who will help us?” said a 58-year-old businessman who, like many, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “The U.N.? The U.S.? China? They all said they would help us. But all they did was blah, blah, blah.”
Some residents specifically found fault with the recent report on Myanmar by Ibrahim Gambari, the United Nations special envoy, who cited “continuing and disturbing reports” of abuses, including “beatings, arbitrary arrests and disappearances.”
“Does the U.N. Security Council really think the regime here will care about its statement?” asked a 46-year-old dissident journalist.
Like diplomats here, many Burmese continue to quietly question the government’s official death toll — which stands at 10 — but they have little more than rumor to go on.
After the protests, the government banned gatherings of more than five people. But each day, across the nation, it organized rallies attended by thousands of people holding signs that condemned “external interference” and accused the BBC, the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia of “airing a skyful of lies.”
The junta also sought to discredit the monks. The New Light of Myanmar, a government-run daily newspaper, reported that during “purification” searches at 18 monasteries, the authorities had found, among other things, pornographic videos, “one Nazi headband and two American headbands.” At the same time, government-run media carried pictures of generals kneeling and bowing before senior monks with cash and food donations — an apparent effort to soften the military’s image.
“They come with fire in one hand and water in the other,” said the 60-year-old monk. “These days, I cannot even leave my monastery without their permission.”
Referenced By: the NYtimes
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