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September 2007 demonstrations in Rangoon, Burma (Yangon, Myanmar)

I arrived in Rangoon early in the morning of September 26 from Bangkok. After checking into the Motherland Hotel I walked to Shwe Dagon, about an hour away, side-tracking to Sule Pagoda on the way.

Just as I arrived at Shwe Dagon, a group of 50 or so monks marched by the south entrance, singing and shouting slogans, and carrying Buddhist flags. Soldiers inside the pagoda immediately locked and baricaded the gates, and extensive heavily armed guards were posted, and I could not get in. The monks kept on going, to the monastery at the east gate.

I walked to that gate, which was also closed, and groups of soldiers were standing around, their guns somewhat casually slung over the shoulder, with Burmese men, women and children watching them.

Then people started moving into a small side street that leads to the monastery at the east gate, and with much commotion the crowd, several hundred people, surged in, then backed off. There were rifle shots (maybe six or eight) and people ran back up the hill; several had been beaten by the soldiers, and there were reports of someone killed. A young monk, from the group I had earlier seen marching past Shwe Dagon, severely beaten, was carried up by two men and the crowd went wild... they surged back towards the gate where the soldiers were but, wisely kept their distance.

A group of soldiers invaded the small monastery above the east gate and tried to beat up and arrest the monks, who fled over the walls. Many did not make it, many who did were cut and bruised.

The soldiers moved up their positions with true military precision, up the alley and the road from the east gate towards the west, emplacing barricades and guards as they went, until they had secured the whole road and all the alleys and side roads up to the big intersection at the south gate.

I watched for a while with a small crowd from the porch at the decrepid Shwe Dagon Hotel, but not much was happening once the soldiers had settled into their positions.

I walked down to Thein Gyi market on Bogyoke Ang San Street for a coffee. Suddenly commotion: the merchants start packing up and lock their shops; the coffee boys gather the little stools and the tea pots, bundle up the tables and make ready to flee. They keep looking at me where I sit, in dumb ignorance, sipping my coffee. They tell me to go as the gates to the market are drawn shut.

At Sule pagoda, a few blocks away, there is a huge crowd, and the mood is ugly. All the roads are closed off and a herd of soldiers blocks Sula, guns at the ready. By stages they get closer to the intersection of Anawratha Street and Pagoda Roads while the crowd thickens.

Demonstration leaders ask us to sit down and we squat on the pavement- only the monks remain standing, their numbers also growing with new arrivals, to much applause and chanting and singing. When I somewhat boldy take some pictures (the soldiers now are not far away, and I seem to be the only foreigner there) there is applause for my support. I am moved to tears.

I climb up the pedestrian bridge over Pagoda Road- not the best location for safety considering it is right overhead the monks and in the line of fire.

For a while it looks as if the monks will march on Sule. There is chanting, then the crowds are led in silent prayer, then the monks chant, standing up while thousands sit or squat silently. There is a decision against a confrontation, and they all march east on Anawratha Street.

Many people come and talk to me- one claims there were three deaths here this morning, and the street is littered with the bricks that were thrown- the people's only weapon.

As the crowd moves east they meet up with another group of demonstraters- now there are perhaps 500 monks and tens of thousands of people. They all move west now, with people linking hands to form a chain around the monks for a symbolic protection, but wisely continue through the intersection rather than approach or confront the soldiers on Pagoda Road, who have now drawn back about 50 meters towards Sule.

As soon as the intersection clears of demonstrators (I am back up on the pedestrian bridge with a handful of others) 5 army trucks with reinforcements drive up from the north. Suddenly there is machine gun fire- several hundred rounds that are fired in the air over the bridge. We hit the bridge deck as bullets whistle overhead and the shooting continues- a show of force to show the crowd how serious the army is. The soldiers want to take no chances that the demonstrators return. It was scary... very scary.

Again people come to me to thank me for my support, and to ask me to PLEASE tell the world what is happening here, and I am so emotional that I can hardly talk- I choke up. I see men and women crying, and folding their hands in prayer, tears streaming down their faces. A man pins a small piece of monk's robe on my chest and thanks me.

After the 9 pm curfues the streets are eerily quiet. I try to check my email but the internet has been shut down by the government..... so much for "telling the world" or sending out pictures.

The next morning, I walk up to Sule pagoda, tightly baricaded and guarded and shut, as is Shwe Dagon, where all roads are now closed. Large amounts of heavily armed soldiers at both.

I take the Circle train from Phra Yar station around the city for $ 1, no kyat accepted from foreigners. I even have to show my passport and a whole form has to be filled out with much carbon paper and many copies and stamps and signatures and the handling and assisting by many functionaries before the Station Master gives his final approval. The old rusty train chugs clockwise through the city, then suburbs and vacant industrial terrains, abandoned factories and empty steel plants, past In Sein prison into serene rice fields, buffalos and palm trees, then back again into the northeastern part of the city.

Just before Kanbe Station, trouble starts. To much shouting from the passengers the steel window guards are lowered as crowds along the tracks throw rocks at the locomotive and many hit my car, the first after the engine. At the station all is quiet but there are many armed soldiers. Then, as we pass the next road intersection (Kanbe and Thitsa Roads), there are large crowds kept at a distance by soldiers on both sides of the tracks who fire shots in the air (I hope) to warn off a few thousand demonstrators as the train passes. We all ducked to the floor as we didn't really know who was shooting at whom. The street is littered with stones and baricaded with razor wire, and a cloud of teargas hangs low over the road.

At the Central Station on Bogyoke Aung San the main entrance to the south and all the gates to Pansodan overpass are locked and guarded, and I have to walk all the way around to the north entrance to get out.

Then, at the Pansodan+Anawratha corner there is a huge crowd, with the military blocking Anawratha to the west, and lots more people on all sides of the intersection, especially to the south, where the Sule pagoda entrance at Mahabandoola Street is also blocked.

There are again clouds of teargas, rocks from an earlier battle, and two water canon. The crowd mills about, there is not much leadership, but the advanced plattoon of soldiers back off to Mahabandoola Street. A monk calms people down and keeps them from charging. At some point a scare sends peolple scurrying away from the soldiers and into the side streets. Later I find out that this is when the Japanese journalist is killed.

Botataung pagoda on the Rangoon River is also heavily guarded; walking down the sidewalk to the temple I suddenly find myself behind the soldiers and I pale in horror at my mistake. An officer runs up to me and asks me what I want and where I am going when I realize my stupidity and peril, and I tell him I wanted to go to the pagoda. The man, very polite but firm, refuses and gives his charges orders to let me pass back to the street. I did not think they would shoot me in the back but I was more than a bit nervous.

Some book titles from my own library on Burma

Burma: Something Went Wrong; Chan Chao
A Thousand Miles on an Elephant in the Shan States; Holt S. Hallett
The Glass Palace; Amitav Ghosh
The Sawbwa and his Secretary; C.Y. Lee
Burma; Insight Guides
Burma's Golden Triangle; Andre and Louis Boucaud
From the Land of Green Ghosts; Pascal Khoo Thwe
Elephant Bill; J.H. Williams
Beyond the Chindwin; Bernard Fergusson
Finding George Orwell in Burma; Emma Larkin
The Trouser People; Andrew Marshall
Burma Road; Nicol Smith
The Burman; Shway Yoe (you can buy it at the Ananda Pagoda in Bagan)
The Iron Road; James Mawdsley
Chasing the Dragon; Christopher Cox
A Merchant Venturer Among the Sea Gipsies; Leopold Ainsworth
Burma Boy; Willis Lindquist
A Journey in Burma (1861 - 1862); Adolf Bastian
Oil in Burma: The extraction of Earth Oil to 1914; Marilyn V. Longmuir
Further India; Hugh Clifford
On Horseback through Indochina; Otto E. Ehlers (Vol I and II)
Wanderings in Burma; G.W. Bird
A Year on the Irrawaddy; E.M. P-B
The Piano Tuner; Daniel Mason
Burma: Cultures of the World
Burmese Days; George Orwell
Mandalay and other cities of the past in Burma; V.C. Scott O'Connor
Burmese Looking Glass; Edith Mirante
Back to Mandalay; Lowell Thomas
Travels in Upper Laos and on the Borders of Yunnan and Burma; Pierre Lefevre-Pontalis

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September 2007 demonstrations in Rangoon, Burma (Yangon, Myanmar)

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