A Swedish diplomat and a Burmese military defector say that the monks’ protest is over:
Word reaching dissidents hiding out on the border suggested that as well as executions, some 2,000 monks are being held in the notorious Insein Prison or in university rooms which have been turned into cells. There were reports that many were savagely beaten at a sports ground on the outskirts of Rangoon, where they were heard crying for help.Others who had failed to escape disguised as civilians were locked in their bloodstained temples.
There, troops abandoned religious beliefs, propped their rifles against statues of Buddha and began cooking meals on stoves set up in shrines….
‘People are scared and the general assessment is that the fight is over. We were informed from one of the largest embassies in Burma that 40 monks in the Insein prison were beaten to death today and subsequently burned.’ The [Swedish]diplomat also said that three monasteries were raided yesterday afternoon and are now totally abandoned.
At his border hideout last night, 42-year-old Mr Win said he hopes to cross into Thailand and seek asylum at the Norwegian Embassy. The 42-year-old chief of military intelligence in Rangoon’s northern region, added: ‘I decided to desert when I was ordered to raid two monasteries and force several hundred monks onto trucks.
‘They were to be killed and their bodies dumped deep inside the jungle. I refused to participate in this.’
Whether the victims are Jews, Buddhists, Christians or even atheists like most of the Chinese students at Tiananmen, the equation is always the same. The secular state, jealous of its power, murdering those it deems threatening.
Government is the problem. Government has murdered more human beings in the last century than every war, civil war and private crime in the world combined.