Junta's crackdown in Burma intensifies

BANGKOK - Intensifying their crackdown despite pressures from abroad, Burmese security forces raided a half-dozen Buddhist monasteries yesterday and opened fire on pockets of demonstrators who continued to demand an end to military rule.

The military government announced that nine people had been killed in the violence, making it the bloodiest day in weeks of escalating protests. In Rangoon, the country's principal city, soldiers marched down the streets warning over loudspeakers that protesters risked getting shot, according to reports reaching exile groups in Thailand.

The dead included a Japanese journalist who had been covering the demonstrations, according to his employer, APF News. Another foreigner was also seen shot and wounded in the street, according to the exile groups.

Communications from Burma, renamed Myanmar by the junta, were sporadic, making the scale of the violence difficult to assess. But the heavy presence of soldiers and police, and their willingness to open fire, indicated the country's military rulers have decided to disregard international appeals to negotiate with political opponents.

Burma crisis explained. A7.

With no sign of compromise on either side, the confrontation appeared to be a test of wills between the government, led by Senior General Than Shwe, and the informal network of monks who have spearheaded the movement, alongside students and other lay political activists.

After news of yesterday's violence reached Washington, the White House renewed its demand that the Burmese junta end the crackdown.

"The world is watching the people of Burma take to the streets to demand their freedom, and the American people stand in solidarity with these brave individuals," President Bush said in a statement. "Every civilized nation has a responsibility to stand up for people suffering under a brutal military regime like the one that has ruled Burma for too long."

The US Treasury Department designated 14 senior Burmese figures targeted by sanctions Bush announced earlier in the week, including Than Shwe, army commander Maung Aye, and acting Prime Minister Thein Sein. Any assets they have in US jurisdictions will be frozen, and Americans are now banned from doing business with them. US officials hope to influence foreign banks and institutions to follow suit.

The European Union also vowed to seek tighter sanctions. The United Nations, meanwhile, said it would send an envoy to Burma, a move the Burmese foreign minister said would be welcomed.

Video images from Burma showed a preponderance of lay people in the demonstrations yesterday, most of them appearing to be of student age. Some news agencies estimated that up to 70,000 people took to the streets of Rangoon and other cities, despite the soldiers' warnings and the death of at least one protester Wednesday.

Soe Aung, spokesman for the National Council of the Union of Burma, an exile group based in Thailand, said the number was probably much lower, perhaps as low as 10,000, which was sharply down from Wednesday. "This would be mainly because of the raids that took place before dawn in Rangoon," he said.

Until yesterday, students and other lay political activists had been following the lead of the monks, mostly young students in cinnamon-colored robes who are undergoing religious training in the monasteries. Although the protests started last month over fuel price rises and economic hardships, over the past two weeks they have blossomed into a frontal challenge to the military's ruling State Peace and Development Council.

Armed security forces burst into at least five monasteries in Rangoon and another two in outlying cities yesterday, ransacking rooms and arresting and beating monks believed to be leaders of the protests, Soe Aung and news agency reports said. At least 150 monks were hauled away in one of the raids, they added.

Myint Thein, a spokesman for the prodemocracy political party headed by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, was also taken into custody during the night, the Associated Press quoted family members as saying.

The arrests marked the beginning of what probably will be an extended series of arrests of monks and lay activists who help promote the protests, said David Mathieson, a Thailand-based Burma specialist with Human Rights Watch. Security services probably had been watching key people for days, monitoring cellphones and noting protest organizers in an effort to identify leaders and mark them for arrest, he said.

"You get involved, and you start getting sloppy," he added, "and then they lock you up." In another sign the government was tightening its grip, exile groups headquartered in neighboring Thailand said communication with their contacts in Rangoon and Burma's other cities was getting more difficult, apparently the result of government efforts to cut cellphone links. Most foreign correspondents were barred from entering the country.

The New Light of Myanmar, the military council's official newspaper, blamed foreign agitators and news media for the wave of unrest that has shaken the country and generated demands for restraint and political reform from Western political leaders.

The "internal instability and civil commotion" was caused by "instigative acts through lies" relayed by foreign radio stations, the newspaper said in an editorial.