NEWS (1-10-2007)

1,000 missing in Myanmar: rights groups
(AFP)

BANGKOK - With protests quashed and many monasteries empty, fears are growing for those who have disappeared into Myanmar’s grim prisons in recent days as rights groups say more than 1,000 are missing.
Foreign diplomats believe at least several hundred Buddhist monks and political activists were taken away at the height of the bloody crackdown last week against the biggest pro-democracy protests in almost 20 years.
The Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), which has for years kept a close watch on political detainees in Myanmar’s 43 prisons, estimates that up to 1,500 people were locked up last week.
At least 85 protest leaders, over 1,000 monks, and between 300 and 400 students and activists were arrested,’ said AAPP joint secretary Bo Kyi, adding that the detainees were subject to harsh prison conditions.
The Buddhist monks, who were at the forefront of what has been dubbed the ‘saffron revolution,’ were forcibly disrobed and ‘severely beaten, kicked and insulted’ by soldiers and militias, the group said in a statement.
Hong Kong-based organisation the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) said ‘at least 700 monks and 500 civilians are estimated to have been captured and taken to unknown locations in the last week.’
These detainees, as well as 150 people arrested after the protests began in August, ‘must all be treated as disappeared, not arrested, until their whereabouts and conditions are confirmed,’ the group said.
Diplomats in Yangon are also trying to assess the true extent of last week’s carnage and the extent of ongoing arrests. Many observers believe the death toll may have been far higher than the 13 known killings.
The diplomat said that, at least for the moment, the protest movement had been ‘efficiently suppressed. Many leaders have been arrested.
Observers say many detainees have been taken to the city’s notorious Insein prison, the Government Technological Institute, the police battalion number seven compound, the Kyaikkasan race track and possibly other locations.

Burma: Thousands dead in massacre of the monks dumped in the jungle
thisislondon.co.uk

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.
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.
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."
With his teenage son, he made his escape from Rangoon, leaving behind his wife and two other sons.
He had no fears for their safety because his brother is a powerful general who, he believes, will defend the family.
Mr Win's defection will raise a faint hope among tens of thousands of Burmese who have fled to villages along the Thai border.
They will feel others in the army may follow him and turn on their ageing leaders, Senior General Than Shwe and his deputy, Vice Senior General Maung Aye.