뉴욕타임스에 따르면 미얀마의 군부는 오늘 시위중인 승려와 시민들을 총과 몽둥으로 진압중이라고 한다. 군부는 어제 밤 9시부터 새벽 5시까지를 통행금지시간으로 정하고 시위를 금하는 포고령을 발표했는데, 오늘 승려들과 시민들은 이에 도전하여 수도 양곤 등지에서 시위를 계속했다. 승려들이 출입 금지된 절로 들어가려하니 경찰이 총을 쏘면서 진압에 나섰다고 한다. 총상을 입은 부상자들이 병원으로 실려 오고 있는데 한 사람은 죽었다는 것이다. 1988년에도 미얀마 군사정부는 평화적 시위대를 流血진압했었다. 약3000명이 피살되었다.

미얀마 군부는 근 50년간 집권하면서도 경제개발엔 실패하여 미얀마는 지금 세계에서 가장 가난한 나라로 분류되고 있다. 김정일 정권과 마찬가지로 그들은 국제사회의 경제봉쇄를 경제실패의 원인이라고 주장하고 있다. 아웅산수키 여사가 민주화의 상징적 인물로 버티고 있음에도 군부는 도저히 합리화할 수 없는 독재를 계속하면서 저희들끼리만 잘 먹고 잘 살고 있다. 중국만이 미얀마를 지지하고 있는데, 최근 국제여론이 나빠지자 공개적인 지지표명을 삼가고 있다.

미얀마는 외부위협도 없고 자원은 풍부하며 사람들도 양순하다. 이런 좋은 나라를 망치고 있는 것은 군부의 폐쇄정책이다. 나라의 문을 닫아거는 지도자가 가장 악질이다. 이승만, 박정희는 독재라는 욕을 먹어가면서도 나라의 문을 열어젖혔다. 그때는 민주화를 외친 야당과 학생들이 오히려 나라의 문을 닫아걸자고 주장했었다. 누가 진짜 守舊이고 누가 진보세력인지 이젠 알겠다.

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Police Clash With Monks in Myanmar


By SETH MYDANS
Published: September 26, 2007
BANGKOK, Thailand, Sept. 26 — In some of the first clashes since Buddhist monks began huge demonstrations a week ago in Myanmar, police with riot shields fired warning shots and dispersed a group of monks today who had defied a new ban on demonstrations, according to news reports from inside the closed country.

Deployed overnight after eight days of demonstrations, security forces blockaded temples in the main city, Yangon, in an effort to prevent monks from marching in the streets as they had for the past eight days.

A group estimated at up to 100 monks apparently evaded the blockades and attempted to enter the giant, gold-spired Shwedagon Pagoda, the holiest of the country’s shrines.

The police shouted orders to disperse, while beating their riot shields with batons and then attempted to chase away the monks and a group of supporters. They then fired warning shots, according to the reports.

Witnesses said another group of about 500 monks was marching toward a different temple, the Sule Pagoda in the heart of the city, that has also been a symbolic gathering point during the demonstrations.

A report by Reuters quoted a hospital source as saying one person was killed and five wounded when security forces moved in to disperse the demonstrations. All of them had gunshot wounds, the source was quoted as saying. It was not known whether any of the victims were monks or what the circumstances of their injuries were, Reuters reported.

Security forces had blocked off all four major entrances to the temple, along with a number of other potential flash points and stood with assault rifles outside several of the city’s major temples.

Earlier the government announced a 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew in the country’s two major cities, Yangon and Mandalay and placed them under the control of local military commanders.

“What they can turn to is only the armed forces, including the police, the military and of course the intelligence agencies,” said U Soe Aung, a spokesman for the National Council of the Union of Burma, a coalition of opposition groups based in neighboring Thailand.

Late Tuesday, witnesses and diplomats on the scene reported that trucks of soldiers were entering the main city, Yangon, and taking positions at strategic locations. Troop movements were also reported elsewhere, notably involving a jungle fighting force that had taken the lead in a massacre of civilians during the country’s last mass upheaval, in 1988.

Throughout the day, tens of thousands of protesters, led by columns of monks, paraded through the city as they had for the past week, in defiance of a warning by the junta to stop. Now, with the curfew, it appeared that the junta was moving to take back the streets of the cities.

Run by a small clique of generals — not all of whom necessarily like each other — the junta is made up mostly of unsophisticated former field commanders who seem suspicious of the outside world and even of more educated Burmese like their nemesis, the pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. They have held her under house arrest for 12 of the past 18 years.

“They are extremely hunkered down, delusional, paranoid and probably afraid at the moment about what could possibly happen,” said David Mathieson, a Human Rights Watch expert on Myanmar, formerly Burma.

By one tally, though, as juntas go, this one has been remarkably successful: It has kept its grip on power for two decades, despite giving the people of Myanmar little reason to support it.

It jails its critics, dragoons townspeople into forced labor and keeps order through fear while pauperizing a potentially thriving nation through economic incompetence.

Calling themselves the State Peace and Development Council, the generals have maintained a policy of isolation for their country and have in turn isolated themselves from the population, a bunker within a bunker.

On Nov. 11, 2005, without explanation, they moved into a remote new capital city called Nyapidaw, some 200 miles north of the former capital, Yangon, previously known as Rangoon. The move appeared at least in part to be defensive — an effort to protect themselves against both a hostile population and a hostile world.

“It is a fantasyland of male military vanity, the embodiment of their own delusions of grandeur,” Mr. Mathieson said. The place is a spick-and-span wasteland of broad, empty avenues, monumental buildings, military installations and at least one golf course.

The junta is at the head of a military whose strength is estimated at upward of 400,000, and it holds to the tenet that only that institution can bind the country together and develop its economy.

A military museum in downtown Yangon, opened a decade ago, was a display of economic development more than of military might, with exhibits on dams, airfields, mines, prisons, hotels and even tourism and beach resorts.

The junta has also been bolstered by China, a major trading partner and bulwark against foreign pressure to change. Though China now seems reluctant to publicly defend the military in the face of the latest protests, it has invested broadly in Myanmar and previously undermined international efforts to negotiate with the government to secure the release of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi.

The Myanmar junta blames foreign economic sanctions for the nation’s poverty, and foreign meddling for the persistence of political opposition, including the current demonstrations.

The junta is led by a tough and taciturn military man, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, 74, a frequent, stolid, uniformed presence on the front pages of government-controlled newspapers.

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