riviersonderend

The Daily Mail berig:

Thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle, a former intelligence officer for Burma’s ruling junta has revealed.

The most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win, said: “Many more people have been killed in recent days than you’ve heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand.”

Mr Win, who spoke out as a Swedish diplomat predicted that the revolt has failed, said he fled when he was ordered to take part in a massacre of holy men. He has now reached the border with Thailand.

Andrew Sullivan skryf:

They have been allegedly rounded up, disrobed and in shackles at a disused race course and a technical college. God knows what will be done to them. One can only hope that Christians will lead the campaign against this vicious attack on non-violent religious freedom.

This is surely becoming an atrocity that renders every regime that deals with Burma and supports this barbarism outside the boundaries of the civilized world. Threatening a boycott of the Beijing Olympics does not seem to me unreasonable, unless the Chinese really do tell the junta to stop the killing.

Der Spiegel berig:

Curious passers-by find themselves facing the soldiers’ Kalashnikov automatic rifles. “Just keep going, for heaven’s sake, and don’t look them in the eye,” one local resident urges. “They shoot without warning.” The soldiers have their steel helmets pulled down deep over their faces, and are all wearing orange-red scarves tied around their shirt collars.

Convoys of four or five trucks at a time constantly patrol the temple district. Young recruits sit on the truck beds, pointing their rifles at people on the streets whenever they feel threatened.

En die wêreld is stil.