Burma's crackdown bloodier than government admits HRW

Burma' military junta killed and detained many more protesters in the September demonstration than it officially had admitted, an international human right dedicate said Friday.

New York-based Human Right Watch said in its report "Crackdown: Repression of the 2007 Popular Protests in Burma", that the security forces shot into crowds using live ammunition and rubber bullets, beat marchers and monks before dragging them onto trucks.

The report documented the killing of 20 people in Rangoon alone and said it believed the death toll was much higher but was unable to gather information from other cities and towns where demonstrations took place.

The junta arbitrarily detained thousands of people in official and unofficial places of detention, it said.

"The crackdown in Burma is far from over," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "Harsh repression continues, and the government is still lying about the extent of the deaths and detentions."

The junta-backed mass organization Union Solidarity and Development Association partly involved in the crackdown, the report said.

In addition to monks, many students and other civilians were killed, although without full and independent access to the country it is impossible to determine exact casualty figures, it said.

Buddhist monk U Khanda, said his monastery was raid by military on September 27 and many monks went missing since then.

"Shouting loudly, they were throwing teargas and firing their automatic guns into the buildings of the monastery, and used their batons to beat the monks whenever they saw them," he was quoted as saying in the report.

"I saw pools of blood, shattered windows, and spent bullet casings on the floor when I came back to the monastery in the morning. We found about 100 monks missing out of 230 monks." U Khanda said.

The 140-parge report was based on more than 100 interviews with eyewitnesses in Burma and Thailand. The Human Right Watch claimed it was the most complete account of the August and September events to date.

The United Nation Special Rapporteur on human rights, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro said last month in Bangkok after his visit to Burma that the junta admitted it killed 15 people, including a Japanese journalist. Fourteen dead bodies were cremated, he said.

It was widely believed that the number of death could be more but no independent source was able to verify the figure. Pinheiro would present his findings on the crackdown to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on December 11.

The ruling State and Peace Development Council (SPDC) claims that overall 2,927 people, including 596 monks, were "interrogated," and almost all have been released. It says that nine people have been sentenced to prison terms, while 59 lay people and 21 monks remain in detention.

Human Rights Watch said that hundreds of protestors, including monks and members of the '88 Generation students, who led protests until being arrested in late August, remain unaccounted for.

- Human Rights Report

- Satellite maps, photos and audio commentary related to the Burma crackdown

The Nation