United Nations envoy Ibrahim Gambari flew to Burma on Saturday carrying worldwide hopes he can persuade its ruling generals to use negotiations instead of guns to end mass protests against 45 years of military rule.
”He’s the best hope we have. He is trusted on both sides,” Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said. ”If he fails, then the situation can become quite dreadful.”
Gambari, a former Nigerian foreign minister, was scheduled to fly straight to the generals’ new capital, Naypyidaw, 385km to the north, after landing in Yangon from Singapore, a diplomatic source said.
Before leaving Singapore, Gambari said he was going ”to deliver a message from the secretary general to the leadership, a message that is very much by the Security Council”.
”I look forward to a very fruitful visit so that I can report progress on all fronts,” Channel News Asia quoted him as saying. Asked if he expected to meet detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Gambari said: ”I expect to meet all the people that I need to meet.”
So far, the junta appears to have ignored international clamour for a peaceful end to their crackdown on a mass uprising led by monks, the moral core of the Buddhist nation, which grew from small protests against shock fuel price rises in August.
Troops and riot police manned barricades on Saturday in the area from which the pro-democracy protests have reverberated around the world and small groups gathered to taunt and curse them before scattering down alleys when they started to charge.
Such cat-and-mouse sparring between the crowds, which would re-emerge at different points, and security forces lasted several hours on Friday. Several shots were fired but there were no reports of any injuries.
The junta says it is acting with restraint.
In practice, that has meant firing at crowds, raiding a dozen monasteries thought to be at the vanguard of the protests, detaining hundreds of monks and sealing off two pagodas marking the start and end points of the daily mass protests.
So far, it appears to be working.
Few monks seen
”Peace and stability has been restored,” state-run newspapers declared on Saturday. Security forces had handled the protests ”with care, using the least possible force”, they said.
On Friday, few monks were seen near the crowds that facing off against security forces around the barbed-wire barriers in a city terrified of a repeat of 1988, when the army killed an estimated 3 000 people in crushing a nationwide uprising.
On Saturday, with their monasteries surrounded, few monks went out on the daily alms collection on which they depend for food, residents said. Many young monks had evaded arrest by casting off their maroon robes and pretending to be laymen.
Protests were staged in the second city of Mandalay, but people there said on Saturday they knew nothing about reports of soldiers firing on colleagues who refused to open fire on crowds the previous day.
”There was a little bit of soldier on the road, but very far from our hotel. Nobody died,” the receptionist at a Mandalay hotel said in halting English. ”Not so dangerous in Mandalay.”
Monks have reported six of their brethren killed since the army started cracking down on Wednesday to end mass protests by columns of monks flanked by supporters who filled five city blocks.
State-run media said 10 people have been killed since the crackdown began, prompting international outrage. Among the dead was a Japanese journalist.
”I am afraid we believe the loss of life is far greater than is being reported,” British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Friday after talking to United States President George Bush.
Bush and Brown discussed the need to maintain international pressure on Burma’s rulers and the White House condemned the present crackdown as ”barbaric”.
Bush authorised new US sanctions against the junta, which has been operating under similar restrictions for years and turns a deaf ear to any criticism of how it handles dissidents.
The European Union summoned Burma’s senior diplomat in Brussels and warned him of tighter sanctions.
EU experts looked into possible restrictions on exports from Burma of timber, precious metals and gems, but reached no decisions, one diplomat said. Investments by specific Europeans in the country were not raised, he said.
Activist Mark Farmaner of the Burma Campaign UK called the EU sanctions ”pathetic”. He said a freeze on assets had netted less than €7 000 across all 27 EU member states and many countries allowed their companies to do business in Burma.
China, the junta’s main ally, publicly called for restraint for the first time on Thursday. But at the United Nations, China has ruled out supporting sanctions or a UN condemnation of the military government’s use of force.
The Association of South East Asian Nations, which rarely criticises one of its own, expressed ”revulsion” at the crackdown. – Reuters