The Dawn Comes Up Like Thunder

Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem titled Mandalay, the title of the post is from that poem. Unfortunately, the news out of Mandalay is even more bleak than Kipling's lament. A reporter for the Sunday Times of London managed to get into Mandalay and the picture from that second city of Burma is very bad indeed.

Thousands of people are incarcerated in four detention centres around Mandalay controlled by the 33rd division of the Burmese army. Its commanders have broken the political power of the 200 monasteries here and shattered the Buddhist clergy as an organised force.

They have instituted the severest repression inflicted upon this city for two decades.

These are the conclusions of a covert visit to Mandalay in which students, intellectuals, monks and local business people took the risk of speaking to a foreign reporter, sometimes in whispers, to tell of their ordeal.

They did so because almost no details of what is happening in the city have yet become known to the international community.

“Three organisations are looking for journalists: the special branch, military intelligence and the USDA,” said the first informant, referring to the Union Solidarity and Development Association, a violent militia group which is employed to intimidate the junta’s opponents.

“If you are caught by the last one, that’s the worst for you and for anybody you are talking to,” he added.

The nightly sweeps of raids and arrests are reinforced by daytime roadblocks and identity checks. Troops drag dozens of people, most of them young, off the streets at gunpoint.

Using counter-terrorist technology supplied by China, the security forces check the registrations of motorcycles against numbers captured from digital images of the huge protests that unfolded from September 23 for five tumultuous days.

It was that last sentence that made me think of Kipling's poem. The full line reads: "An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!" Human Rights Watch is calling for an end to arms shipments to Burma by China, Russia and India. That won' happen with China and Russia already blocking in the Security Council. Meanwhile the cracking of heads continues apace in Burma.