| Sports |
By ANDREW HARDING
Myanmar struggle goes underground
BANGKOK: On the telephone from
Yangon, the businessman sounded desperate.
“I have looked everywhere,” he said.
“The soldiers took my daughter off the street last week.
“I don’t know if she is injured or what has happened to her. She
is only 18.”
As Myanmar’s military authorities continue to hunt down and
arrest those suspected of involvement in last week’s massive
street protests, the fate of an unknown number of detained monks
and civilians remains unclear.
“I have heard that 6,000 people may be missing – that sounds
plausible,” one Western diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
A local United Nations official said his office was still
looking for several staff members and their families.
The businessman hunting for his daughter had already visited two
places widely thought to have been turned into makeshift
detention centres – a sports complex at Yangon’s old race
course, and a technical institute in the north of the city.
“The soldiers outside the institute told me it was empty,” the
businessman said, “but a friend in the neighbourhood told me two
buildings were being used – one for female prisoners, and the
other mainly for monks. I am at a loss as to what to do now.”
“It’s frightening to even think about the fate of those monks,”
Shari Villarosa, the senior US diplomat in Yangon, said.
She said conditions in Myanmar prisons were “very grim, with
reports of torture”.
“The message has to get to the generals that this is not how a
legitimate government acts in the 21st Century,” she added.
But the Myanmar authorities have shown no signs of responding to
international pressure.
Military vehicles patrol Yangon’s streets before dawn, with
loudspeakers announcing: “We have photographs. We are going to
make arrests.”
A former Myanmar political prisoner, who spent a decade in jail
for criticising the regime, said it was safe to assume from his
own experiences that many of those detained would be tortured.
“The monks will have a very hard time,” he said.
“I was blindfolded and subjected to sleep deprivation. They
interrogated me in shifts for 11 days.”
The man, who lives in Yangon, wanted to remain anonymous for his
own safety but urged the outside world to put pressure on the
authorities by publicising the names of those arrested.
“That has to happen now. Not next week or next month,” he added.
Although the Myanmar military has forced the protesters off
Yangon’s streets, this does not appear to have broken the
resolve of democracy campaigners.
Nilar Thein has gone into hiding since the very first street
protests, triggered by abrupt fuel price rises, were broken up
by police and hired government thugs last month.
Although her husband and many other leading activists from the
“88 Generation” (named after the last student uprising of 1988)
are now in prison, Nilar Thein is still on the run with a
handful of other activists.
Reached by telephone, she broke away from a planning meeting to
declare: “There will be more sacrifices ahead. We must find a
way to win this battle by joining hands with the monks and the
public.”
She urged members of the Myanmar armed forces to stop fighting
for “generals with blood on their hands”.
Nilar, 35, left her five-month-old daughter with her
mother-in-law when she went into hiding.
Police are now guarding the house.
Asked when she thought she would see her child again, Nilar
replied: “I hope when we are finally victorious that all our
families will be reunited.
“I can’t predict how long that will take.” – BBC
 
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