From The Times :

September 29, 2007

Exclusive from Rangoon: democracy takes a beating as uneasy calm returns to streets

Something like normality — which means fear — returns to Burma as the junta’s iron grip slowly squeezes the life out of protests

Kenneth Denby in Rangoon

The Burmese democracy movement may have died yesterday. Or it could just be regrouping.

It was a loose, ragged, frustrating day in Rangoon, a day of baton charges, beatings and many rumours of much worse. I saw soldiers levelling guns, firing volleys of hard rubber pellets, as well as chases and arrests.

But something like normality is returning to Burma: which is to say that, just as they have been for much of the past 40 years, people are afraid again.

The democracy leaders have already been arrested, the monks are locked down in their monasteries and, yesterday, it was ordinary people who were the most prominent — by their absence.

On Thursday I saw old people and middle-aged women cheering on the protesters as they stood face to face with the soldiers in the road to the Sule Pagoda. Yesterday, there were just young men, some of them slightly disreputable looking, with an a [ ... ]

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