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| Southeast Asia |
| Mynamar junta takes soldiers off Yangon streets |
| 2007-10-08 |
| The Myanmar junta reduced security in Yangon sharply on Sunday, apparently confident it would face no further mass protests against military rule, but the streets remained unusually quiet and arrests continued. The last barricades were removed from the centre of the former capital around the Shwedagon and Sule pagodas which were the starting and finishing points of protests soldiers crushed by firing into crowds and arresting monks and other demonstrators. The few people on the streets said they were still fearful and the Internet, through which dramatic images of the protests and sweeping security force actions to end them reached an outraged world, remained cut off. People on the streets were too scared to talk despite the ruling generals saying for the first time they were willing to talk to detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, albeit on conditions she is unlikely to accept. Senior General Than Shwe, the head of the lasted junta in 45 years of unbroken military rule in the former Burma, offered direct talks if Suu Kyi abandoned "confrontation" and her support for sanctions and "utter devastation." Nyan Win, a spokesman for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, or NLD, said the offer could open a path to talks about talks. "It is a significant improvement on the past situation. They have never committed themselves to talking to her," he said. Myanmar analysts caution against optimism as hopes of change in the past have been dashed so often, punctuated by the army killing 3,000 people in crushing an uprising in 1988, and state-run newspapers said more people had been arrested. They said on Sunday 78 more people suspected of taking part in mass protests which filled five Yangon city blocks had been picked up for questioning. They said 1,216 people who took part "unknowingly" had been released in the Yangon area after signing pledges not to participate in protests and 398 of the 533 monks taken in monastery raids around the city had been freed. There was no word on the numbers of arrests and releases in other cities where thousands of people were reported to have protested against military rule, but Nyan Win said a senior NLD member was arrested in the second city of Mandalay overnight. |
| Posted by:Fred |