Only now, the full horror of Burmese junta's repression of monks emerges - Independent Online Edition > Asia

Only now, the full horror of Burmese junta's repression of monks emerges - Independent Online Edition > Asia: "Only now, the full horror of Burmese junta's repression of monks emerges By Rosalind Russell Published: 11 October 2007 Monks confined in a room with their own excrement for days, people beaten just for being bystanders at a demonstration, a young woman too traumatised to speak, and screams in the night as Rangoon's residents hear their neighbours being taken away. Harrowing accounts smuggled out of Burma reveal how a systematic campaign of physical punishment and psychological terror is being waged by the Burmese security forces as they take revenge on those suspected of involvement in last month's pro-democracy uprising. The first-hand accounts describe a campaign hidden from view, but even more sinister and terrifying than the open crackdown in which the regime's soldiers turned their bullets and batons on unarmed demonstrators in the streets of Rangoon, killing at least 13. At least then, the world was watching. The hidden crackdown is as methodical as it is brutal. First the monks were targeted, then the thousands of ordinary Burmese who joined the demonstrations, those who even applauded or watched, or those merely suspected of anti-government sympathies. 'There were about 400 of us in one room. No toilets, no buckets, no water for washing. No beds"