THAILAND: Myanmar activists outside embassy in Thailand

More than 100 Myanmar activists held a demonstration on Sunday (October 14) outside Myanmar embassy in Bangkok to call for an end to violence against peaceful demonstrators in their homeland. The protesters wore red t-shirts and red headbands and chanted "Free Burma" slogans and carried banners reading as "Stop Killing Now" and "U.N. Take Action Now". The protesters also urged ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) to expel SPDC (State Peace and Development Council) ruled Myanmar. They also called on the United Nations to unseat SPDC from the U.N. family. On his last trip, the United Nations envoy to Myanmar Ibrahim Gambari was given a rare audience with Senior General Than Shwe as well as two short meetings with detained opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Gambari visited Myanmar last month to help halt a bloody crackdown on Myanmar's biggest democracy protest in 20 years but many activists thought the trip had little meaning. "When Gambari visited Myanmar he met Than Shwe and also Suu Kyi which was just a set up. It means nothing," said William Chit Sein, one of the protestors. Htay Kywe, a prominent student activist from an uprising in 1988, was detained overnight with three other people in one of the many raids still being conducted by police more than two weeks after soldiers were sent in to crush demonstrations. U.N. envoy Gambari is flying back to Asia this weekend to brief regional governments, and hopes to wind up his trip with another visit to Myanmar before the end of the month. However, the tone of Myanmar's response to an unprecedented rebuke this week from the U.N. Security Council, which "strongly deplored" the military crackdown against Buddhist monks and civilians, suggests otherwise. Official media described the council's statement as "regrettable" and said it was "totally disregarding the fact that the situation in Myanmar does not represent a threat to the regional and international peace and security".

ITN Source | October 14, 2007

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