It began at around midday on New Yaetarshay Street, and if you had been more than a few blocks away in this noisy city you might have missed it: the sound of gunfire, first an automatic burst of around eight shots, and then a dozen more fired slowly and purposefully.

The monks and demonstrators heard it on Old Yaetershay Street, and they heard it around the corner at the headquarters of the National League for Democracy. Within moments, the news was spreading among the tens of thousands of demonstrators in Rangoon, and then across the world, to Bangkok, London and Washington, by mobile phone, e-mail and instant messaging. After nine days of protests, each one bigger than the last, the crackdown had begun.

Last night, as the city slept under curfew, 200 people had been arrested, about 100 had been injured and at least five had been killed, after soldiers and police fired shots into the air and bludgeoned pro-democracy monks and their secular supporters.

It was not the massacre that many had feared, although that may come. But a line has been crossed: the ring of invulnerability that appeared to surround the orange-robed monks, and which lifted the spirits and dispelled the fear of ordinary Burmese, has been broken.

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What exactly happened, and in what order, is not clear, but it was obvious yesterday morning that, after more than a week of ever-swelling demonstrations, the junta had had enough. Overnight, there were arrests, most notably of Zaganar, probably the world’s bravest comedian, a man who has been making Burmese laugh and expressing a calm, dignified opposition to the regime for decades. There were rumours – unconfirmed – that Aung San Suu Kyi, 62, the Nobel prize-winner and leader of the pro-democracy movement, had been moved from house arrest to Insein prison in Rangoon.

In the morning, police and soldiers took up positions around the symbolic centres of Rangoon: the Sule Pagoda, the City Hall and the towering golden Shwedagon Pagoda, where the demonstrators have been assembling. With them were the regime’s heavies, the despised members of the United Solidarity and Development Association, and another pro-government group, the Masters of Force, who have often beaten up and abducted opponents of the government.

So the marchers broke into smaller groups and took different routes. Many ordinary people joined them, and many more shouted their support from the sidelines and jeered at the men in uniform. One column of marchers took to New Yaetarshay Street – where they ran into the police.

There were later encounters in a street close to City Hall and in front of the Sule Pagoda, and they seem to have followed a similar pattern. Short bursts of gunfire aimed, not into the crowd, but above their heads; teargas filling the air. Then fierce baton charges, which left scores of demonstrators bleeding and concussed and at least a handful dead.

Burmese state television reported that one 30-year-old had been killed, and another two men and one woman injured, after the security forces had come under a barrage of stones and sticks, and two of their motorbikes were set alight.

“Because of the difficult situation, the security forces opened fire to disperse the crowd, using just a little force against the violent protesters,” the newsreader explained. “Because they opened fire, the protesters dispersed.”

But the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, based in Bangkok, claimed that five monks had been killed. Government officials told Agence France-Presse in Rangoon that at least three monks had been killed, one of them as he tried to wrestle a gun from a soldier, two others beaten to death. Yangon General Hospital said that it had received a dead body, not that of a monk, with bullet wounds.

In Burma’s second city, Mandalay, which is also under curfew, the Asian Human Rights Commission said that there had been no opposition to 10,000 protesting against grinding poverty. Five decades ago, the country was regarded as one of Asia’s brightest prospects. Now it is one of its most desperate.

In the northwest coastal town of Sittwe, where some of the biggest protests outside Rangoon have taken place, residents said that 10,000 took to the streets yesterday, the Buddhist holy day.

The National League for Democracy (NLD), which lost thousands of supporters during the last violent crackdown against antigovernment protesters in 1988, had the strongest words for a regime that slaughters Buddhist monks: it called it “the greatest wrong in history”.

The NLD, which is led by Ms Suu Kyi, won the country’s last election, in 1990, but the party has never been allowed to take up the people’s mandate, and she has languished under house arrest in Rangoon ever since.

Last night, the city was unnaturally quiet. There was almost no one out on the main streets; the only police to be seen were guarding the road to the Sule Pagoda. The monks had all gone back to their monasteries; in the side streets, a few men sat outside their front doors smoking, waiting for the 9pm curfew, and whispering anxious warnings to foreigners.

A few days ago, a young Burmese explained to me the secret power of these demonstrations. “It’s easy for them to kill students – they can call them communists, terrorists. But it’s hard to kill a monk,” he said. Yesterday, it got much easier. Soon, perhaps as soon as today, it could come to seem very easy indeed, as easy as a flailing truncheon or the trigger squeeze on an automatic rifle.

Protest blogs

With the Government restricting visas to foreign journalists, and all media controlled by the State, the internet provides one of the main media for getting reports to the outside world:

“ One of the soldiers was shooting into the crowd near by the Sualae Pagoda . . . the soldier is not a professional, because so many of his bullets went up into the sky, and also into the restaurant and a man was hit.
ko-htike.blogspot.com

Tomorrow . . . we need more strength and resistance, if we can stand tomorrow, I am 80 per cent sure that our hope is coming.
koniknayman.blogspot.com

My duty is working on Emergency YGH . . . at about 2pm 5 patients was coming. . . for gunshot from government militaries . . . 1 patient died on the spot on arriving at Hospital . . . (shot in the bladder) 4 r still bad in diagnosis . . . The patient’s attendant said . . . they (victims) are just chatting and watching the protest.
ko-htike.blogspot.com

Brig. Gen. Thura Myint Maung, Myanmar’s religious affairs minister, was on television with senior Buddhist clerics, saying that young monks were “persuaded” by “external and internal elements”.
weblog.xanga.com/dawn_1o9

We all, as one of a people, will courageously refuse all the unlawful orders by the military regime. Therefore we will stand firm with patriotic spirit. All the people will come out to the street like the other days. I would like to request all other people to collaborate with us.
seinkhalote.blogspot.com

Another column of thousands of people are coming on their way to reinforce the peaceful demonstrators who are in confrontation with armed military troops. A respectful old monk is in the vanguard of the column singing national anthem and holding flags of fighting peacock. Despite being peaceful, demonstrators have been beaten to break up the crowd. The demonstrators are reciting “metta sutta”(A discourse on loving kindness, about aggression)
seinkhalote.blogspot.com

Translation by Thant Zin

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