[Buddha-l] News from Burma

[Christopher Fynn]

The day Burma was silenced.
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2545351.ece>:

<<...
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 that 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 thin mattresses were soaked with blood.

“We had to flee for our lives into the neighbourhood,” said a small bespectacled 
young man named Ashin Thu, one of the few monks to have evaded arrest. “A family 
let me hide in one of their houses, I was so scared.”

The bullets may have been rubber, but at close range they can still do great 
damage. Seventy monks were driven away bleeding in 24 military vehicles and, to 
judge from the pools of blood in the yard, several of them were gravely injured. 
...>>

Photographer's last seconds caught on film
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2554727.ece>

<< Footage capturing the last, terrible seconds of Kenji Nagai’s life has been 
shown on Japanese television, horrifying a nation and raising official suspicion 
that the 50-year-old journalist was murdered by Burmese troops. The shaky, 
indistinct moments of footage appear to show Nagai, who was in a crowd of 
demonstrators, shoved violently to the ground by a soldier and shot dead at 
point-blank range.>>


Satellites confirm reports of Myanmar violence
<http://www.reuters.com/article/asiaCrisis/idUSN28447581>

<< WASHINGTON, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Satellite images confirm reports earlier this 
year of burned villages, forced relocations and other human rights abuses in 
Myanmar, scientists said on Friday.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science said the high-resolution 
photographs taken by commercial satellites document a growing military presence 
at 25 sites across eastern Myanmar, matching eyewitness reports.

"We found evidence of 18 villages that essentially disappeared," AAAS researcher 
Lars Bromley said in an interview.
...>

- C