Burma's military junta tonight imposed daytime curfews and a ban on gatherings of more than five people in an attempt to bring a halt to eight days of widespread demonstrations.

The regime deployed soldiers and riot police around Rangoon as an estimated 30,000 Buddhist monks and 70,000 secular demonstrators once again marched through the city, with rumours that it was readying large numbers of troops to crush the protests.

President Bush unilaterally tightened sanctions on Burma today amid hints that the dictatorship of General Than Shwe was planning to suppress by force the biggest challenge to military rule in 19 years. Residents said that curfews had been imposed on the cities of Rangoon and Mandalay along with the assembly ban, indicating that the regime was no longer prepared to tolerate this continued defiance of its authority by a people it has held in an iron grip for over four decades.

Loudspeaker announcements in Rangoon, the former capital, said the curfew would run from 9:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. local time, but there were few signs today that the monks and nuns leading the protests were prepared to obey. In a further signal that a potentially brutal military crackdown was imminent, the city was also placed under direct control of its military commander for 60 days.

Expert View

Lives of the monks and supporters depend on whether the regime can remain deaf to the rest of the world

Richard Lloyd Parry

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The troops visibly deployed on the street were relatively few in number – some 200 soldiers and riot police in eleven trucks, according to reports - but Burmese exiles in Thailand reported that two divisions of troops had been diverted from the civil war in other parts of the country to converge on Rangoon. If true this would be an ominous move from a Government which killed as many as 3,000 protesters after similar mass demonstrations in 1988.

Amid worldwide entreaties for military restraint, US President George W. Bush told the UN General Assembly that, "Americans are outraged by the situation in Burma". He broke off from his planned speech to announce tougher sanctions on Burma and called on other countries to follow suit.

"The United States will tighten economic sanctions on the leaders of the regime and their financial backers. We will impose an expanded visa ban on those responsible for the most egregious violations of human rights, as well as their family members," he said.

"The ruling junta remains unyielding, yet the people’s desire for freedom is unmistakable."

Opposition leaders in Rangoon are struggling to contain the energy of the demonstrations to prevent anything which could be used as a pretext for a crackdown by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the junta calls itself. They fear a split between radicals, who want to bring down the regime, and moderates who believe that the most important thing is to avoid frightening off ordinary Burmese and bring of them out onto the street in an overwhelming display of moral authority.

Ironically, the demonstrators are demanding much less of the SPDC than foreign governments, including Britain. Today, the foreign secretary, David Miliband, said that he hoped to see Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained opposition leader and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, become the leader of Burma. The monks are asking for no more than an apology for abuse by the regime, the lowering of fuel prices, the release of political prisoners and political dialogue with the junta.

"There should be no agitation to topple the military regime," Sann Aung, a member of Ms Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, told The Times yesterday. "It will make people much more wary of a military response and people will become very reluctant to join the movement."

Car with loudspeakers drove around the city yesterday morning warning citizens not to join the demonstrations. "People are not to follow, encourage or take part in these marches," the warning said. "Action will be taken against those who violate this order." But as well as Rangoon, there were demonstrations in at least seven other towns and cities.

Guerrilla commanders of the Karen National Union, an ethnic army which is fighting the SPDC for control of territory close to the Burma-Thai border, reported that two army divisions were pulling out of the region, apparently for Rangoon. "They could get there pretty quickly," said Colonel Ner Dah Mya. "By tomorrow, maybe today."

Just as on previous days, the barefooted monks marched from the famous Shwedagon Pagoda down to the Sule Pagoda and then the United Nations offices, bearing portraits of the Buddha and chanting prayers, while people linked hands to form a chain around them.

Their slogans expressed only indirect attacks on the regime. "Release Aung San Suu Kyi and political prisoners," went one chant, and: "May the will of the people be fulfilled." The crowd responded: "Our cause."

Meanwhile, young activists with small digital cameras and mobile phone cameras sent out a steady stream of still and moving images of the demonstrations via the Internet, despite the efforts of the regime. Since the earliest demonstrations of a few hundred people last month, mobile and fixed telephone lines of activists have been cut off and blocks have been installed in Burmese Internet servers.

But the young activists use foreign hosted servers or "proxy sites" which side-step the firewalls and can access banned foreign news sources and free email services and chat software. Proxy servers such as Glite, Your-freedom.net and Yeehart.com are constantly updated by programmer outside Burma in response to the junta’s attempts to block them.

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