UN seeks end to Burma killings
United Nations’ special envoy Ibrahim Gambari flew into a crisis-stricken Burma today on an emergency mission to persuade the country’s ageing junta of generals, who have ruled for 45 years, to settle the country’s political crisis without any more bloodshed.
Three days of violence have claimed up to 200 lives as the military launched a brutal clampdown after weeks of pro-democracy demonstrations led by tens of thousands of monks, but this weekend the junta appeared to be becoming increasingly isolated even among its closest Asian allies - including China. Gambari indicated that he expected to be allowed to speak to the pro-democracy opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who is presently under house arrest in Rangoon.
‘I expect to meet all the people that I need to meet,’ he told reporters. Gambari, a former Nigerian Foreign Minister, landed first in Rangoon, then flew on to the generals’ new capital, the bunker city of Naypyidaw, where he was due to meet dictator General Than Shwe. He said that he was going ‘to deliver a message from the Secretary-General to the leadership’ in line with last week’s condemnation by the UN Security Council.
The junta has ignored international demands for a peaceful end to their crackdown on a mass uprising led by monks, the moral core of the Buddhist nation. Gambari’s visit came amid reports that the latest clampdown had only been achieved at the cost of increasingly wide divisions in the military itself - including, some reports alleged, between Than Shwe and the head of the army, Vice General Maung Aye, who is understood to have argued with Than Shwe over last week’s violent clampdown. It is also believed that Maung Aye is thought to have sought a meeting with Suu Kyi.
There were reports today, confirmed by several sources, that hundreds, possibly thousands, of Buddhist monks have been rounded up by the military and taken from monasteries to a temporary detention camp set up in the Government Technology Institute School on the outskirts of Rangoon.
The French news agency AFP said security forces charged a group of around 100 protesters on the Pansoedan bridge in Rangoon. ‘They beat people so badly,’ one eyewitness said. ‘I wonder how these people can bear it. I saw the security forces arrest about five people on the streets.’
