QUOTE
A SENIOR Burmese intelligence official claims thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle.
After defecting from the military junta and fleeing to the Thai border, Hla Win told a reporter from London's Daily Mail: "Many more people have been killed in recent days than you've heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand."
The horrific details emerged as Burma's top general continued to snub the UN's peace envoy, who is in Rangoon on a mission to convey the world's outrage to the junta.
With protests quashed and many monasteries empty, fears are growing for those who have disappeared into Burma's grim jails.
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 racetrack and possibly elsewhere.
Mr Win said he fled when he was ordered to help massacre holy men.
Other exiles along the frontier confirmed that hundreds of monks had simply "disappeared".
Pro-democracy campaigners inside Burma yesterday released a graphic video showing the semi-naked body of a badly bruised monk, floating face down in a Rangoon river.
Mr Win, 42, a former chief of military intelligence in Rangoon's northern region, said: "I decided to desert when I was ordered to raid two monasteries and force several hundred monks on to trucks.
"They were to be killed and their bodies dumped deep inside the jungle. I refused to participate in this," he said.
Dissidents hiding along the Burma border said thousands of monks had been locked up and were being beaten inside blood-stained temples.
A Swedish diplomat told the Daily Mail of more reports that monks had been tortured and killed in large numbers.
"We were informed from one of the largest embassies in Burma that 40 monks in the Insein prison were beaten to death today and subsequently burned," the diplomat said.
The diplomat also said three monasteries had been abandoned after being raided on Sunday afternoon.
Yesterday, for the second time in three days, UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari failed in a bid to arrange a meeting with Burmese junta leader Than Shwe.
An Information Ministry official yesterday said Mr Gambari had been taken on a government-sponsored trip to Lashio, almost 400km northeast of the capital Naypyidaw, for a workshop on EU-Asian relations.
"He will come back tomorrow and he will meet with the senior general tomorrow in Naypyidaw," the official said.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a 10-nation bloc that includes Burma, condemned the junta in a letter released to the media yesterday.
On September 29, ASEAN chairman Singapore PM Lee Hsien Loong wrote to Senior General Shwe: "We are most disturbed by reports of the violent means that the authorities in Myanmar (Burma) have deployed against the demonstrators, which have resulted in injuries and deaths.
"The videos and photographs of what is happening on the streets of Yangon (Rangoon) and other cities in Myanmar have evoked the revulsion of people throughout Southeast Asia and all over the world," he wrote.
Theories varied widely as to why Mr Gambari, dispatched after troops were sent in to end more than a week of mass protests against decades of military rule, had not met Than Shwe, despite an hour of talks with detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.
The 74-year-old Senior General, frequently rumoured to be in poor health, may be sick, playing hard to get or even demonstrating contempt for international concern, diplomats said.
After defecting from the military junta and fleeing to the Thai border, Hla Win told a reporter from London's Daily Mail: "Many more people have been killed in recent days than you've heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand."
The horrific details emerged as Burma's top general continued to snub the UN's peace envoy, who is in Rangoon on a mission to convey the world's outrage to the junta.
With protests quashed and many monasteries empty, fears are growing for those who have disappeared into Burma's grim jails.
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 racetrack and possibly elsewhere.
Mr Win said he fled when he was ordered to help massacre holy men.
Other exiles along the frontier confirmed that hundreds of monks had simply "disappeared".
Pro-democracy campaigners inside Burma yesterday released a graphic video showing the semi-naked body of a badly bruised monk, floating face down in a Rangoon river.
Mr Win, 42, a former chief of military intelligence in Rangoon's northern region, said: "I decided to desert when I was ordered to raid two monasteries and force several hundred monks on to trucks.
"They were to be killed and their bodies dumped deep inside the jungle. I refused to participate in this," he said.
Dissidents hiding along the Burma border said thousands of monks had been locked up and were being beaten inside blood-stained temples.
A Swedish diplomat told the Daily Mail of more reports that monks had been tortured and killed in large numbers.
"We were informed from one of the largest embassies in Burma that 40 monks in the Insein prison were beaten to death today and subsequently burned," the diplomat said.
The diplomat also said three monasteries had been abandoned after being raided on Sunday afternoon.
Yesterday, for the second time in three days, UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari failed in a bid to arrange a meeting with Burmese junta leader Than Shwe.
An Information Ministry official yesterday said Mr Gambari had been taken on a government-sponsored trip to Lashio, almost 400km northeast of the capital Naypyidaw, for a workshop on EU-Asian relations.
"He will come back tomorrow and he will meet with the senior general tomorrow in Naypyidaw," the official said.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a 10-nation bloc that includes Burma, condemned the junta in a letter released to the media yesterday.
On September 29, ASEAN chairman Singapore PM Lee Hsien Loong wrote to Senior General Shwe: "We are most disturbed by reports of the violent means that the authorities in Myanmar (Burma) have deployed against the demonstrators, which have resulted in injuries and deaths.
"The videos and photographs of what is happening on the streets of Yangon (Rangoon) and other cities in Myanmar have evoked the revulsion of people throughout Southeast Asia and all over the world," he wrote.
Theories varied widely as to why Mr Gambari, dispatched after troops were sent in to end more than a week of mass protests against decades of military rule, had not met Than Shwe, despite an hour of talks with detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.
The 74-year-old Senior General, frequently rumoured to be in poor health, may be sick, playing hard to get or even demonstrating contempt for international concern, diplomats said.
The Link
Where is the outrage from the left? Guess this will not be an issue until a dysfunctional emotional leftist makes this a cause. Where is Harry or Nancy or Rosie when you need them? Oh I forgot, they are too busy misquoting Rush to worry about the slaughter of thousands of Buddist Monks. Not to worry though, the UN is on the case.
