Burma: Than Schwe’s Irrevocable Public Shame
Oct 27th, 2007 | 14 responses
Dear reader, I am loath to bring this to you. My stomach has shooting pains as I write this. That feeling of being at the edge of throwing up. Not from revulsion. From seeing the work of pure Evil.
There are two images that have been smuggled out of Burma. The first is this one… of this poor dear soul, who is lying dead in a mortuary in Burma having been beaten to death at Senior General Than Schwe’s orders.
That this holy man’s face is swollen from blows to the back of his head that are hideously apparent in the second picture… the swelling of his skin makes him appear somewhat young.
But, he isn’t. He is likely, given the thinness of his little childlike chest and wasted muscle of his arms, and the tiny white hairs of his beard, and his salt and pepper hair, likely more in his sixties. His chest as you can see is dead black because someone has mortally assaulted him, and this poor soul’s skin has torn away and dried in curls.
His body appears to have been washed somehow: he may have been in the river, dead on his back so that his wounds, which you see most in the second image, appear cleansed. Or he may have been left face down in the rain, so that most of his blood was washed away.
I wrote a post yesterday about this being the time of the year, October, when the tradition in Buddhist countries is to weave new red and saffron cloth to give to the monks for robes. Yet, diplomats in Burma have said the monasteries are empty and there are no monks to be seen, and no one knows where they are.
Today, Than Schwe, has heaped even more shame upon himself publicly by making a mockery of this holy October tradition. Than Schwe has held a contrived public photo op for himself, and forced some monks to stand and receive alms from ‘the pious’ …all the while being photographed for show.
To add to the shame, Than Schwe has maintained on state TV that no monks at all have died. None. Zero.
Yet, Schwe has no words telling the whereabouts of the hundreds, if not thousands of monks still unaccounted for.
Than Schwe named “Religious Affairs Minister,” a Mr. Brigadier-General Thura Myint Aung, who claims today that “bogus monks” working with imprisoned activists had organized the demonstrations.
The Burma File Newsdesk Special has reported that Mr. Brigadier-General Thura Myint Aung has also claimed that, “True monks had remained in their monasteries,” he said in an interview accompanied by pictures of pious members of the regime offering alms and tributes to solemn-faced clergy.
Thus Mr. Brigadier-General Thura Myint Aung became Than Schwe’s second swamp of shame, for Schwe ordered his minister to also say the following on state TV: “No monks at all have died.”
(This… presumably to go along with earlier claims by Than Schwe and his ‘ministers,’ that when he caused the monasteries to be invaded the troops found nothing but monks, pornography and American flags with swastikas painted on them…)
Mr. Brigadier General’s appears to knowingly and purposefully falsify information according to Than Schwe’s last hope to pull the wool over the eyes of the International Community. It’s way too late for that, however.
The evidence of Than Schwe’s murders of holy men is clear. Concise. Here we see the brutality of the injuries on this monk’s body. And, in an image I ran with an article last week, there was another proof, of a different dead monk, face down and dead in the river, stripped naked of his robes and beaten literally black from ears to tail-bone.
I can only say this at this moment: Than Schwe, you are on very thin ice security-wise. That you have unleashed such evil in young Buddhist men who are your coddled soldiers, that you clearly have near you men who are psychopaths who can beat an innocent holy person beyond recognition, and to death, and not think a thing of it … means you and your family will now never, ever be safe. Ever. Psychopaths live to do harm, Than Schwe. They are not particular about to whom.
____________
I’ve put on the next page the second picture of the same murdered elder monk. I have put it there rather than here for it is very hard to look at. I wanted you to have a choice in the matter, for the image is likely to disturb most. Someone must have gently turned this monk’s body over, and you see the gashes through to the spine from bayonet or machete-like sword, and the rifle butt fractures of the skull that killed this soul. It is such a devastating set of injuries, this poor soul never had a chance, and likely died on his knees, the attack appears to be at the left shoulder and from ‘the coward’s direction,’ from the back.
I would just say that if you look, it would be alright to put your palm over the screen for a moment and just think the best blessing you have, across, across, across the oceans and let it fall like sweet rain over Burma.
warning: graphic image of injuries if you turn to the rest of the story.
May this soul, who was so brave, rest in peace.
May we, by proxy, carry the best of his thoughts
and the best of his deeds further into the world.
In this way, may he live forever.
dr.e
14 Responses to “Burma: Than Schwe’s Irrevocable Public Shame”
The news continues to be bad.
A Burmese in exile described on PBS how the military continue their revenge on protesters
When the daily nighttime curfew begins and people are trapped in their homes, trucks come to haul away people on their enemies lists,, inlcuding many of the remaining monks. Apparently, they are identifying individuals from rapes of the protests and locating where they live.
The brutality is very efficient.
Keep pushing this story, the situation in Burma is more important than the California fires. Yet, the Burma story is now off the radar, a couple thousand homes is more important than murdered monks(?).
Burma is dropping off the map, despite your fine reporting. It is almost as if someone turned a switch and all my News Alerts have dropped to almost nothing. Thank goodness I saved my links.
China seems to be winning the Traffic Management Censorware War.
8-08-88~8-08-08
Om Mani Padme Hum
My Name Is Burma
backhandpath, Rudi and domajot… Thank you for your prayers and encouragements and thoughts.
Re “traffic mgt censorship’ backhandpath… My articles showed up on GoogleChina over these past weeks, but since then, some of my Burmese articles (update, now all of them) seem to have disappeared according to one of my correspondents in Thailand. I don’t quite know what this means, but in a momentary fit, I thought, Fine, have at it, but no matter what cyberwalls the Chinese gov’t tries to build, water will still leach through stone.
domajot, I see you said ‘rapes,’ when perhaps you meant ‘tapes,’ and though I could fix it if it’s a typo, I think, don’t you, we should let it stand? It’s one of the more poignant slips of tongue that points to a truth.
And Rudy, you’re right, when you compare coverage of this thing to that thing, there’s often HUGE disparity in proportion of time given to matters that are ongoing and worthy, just as the OJ trial which consumed msm resources in the billions of dollars in order to gain advertising dollars, in return.
We might sometimes get more perseverative ‘newsmaking’ than newsgathering when it’s about the stockholders being
made happy. Or rushing on to ‘the next event’ with such velocity.
All the more reason to bless souls like each of you and those worldwide, for being alert and remaining, in heart
and mind, on watch, together…. for others. Yours is a remarkable phenomena of constancy during our times.
dr.e
[...] Burma: Than Schwe’s Irrevocable Public ShameThe Moderate Voice – Dear reader, I loathe to bring this to you. My stomach has shooting pains as I write this. That feeling of being at the edge of throwing up. Not from revulsion. From seeing the work of pure Evil. There are two images that have been smuggled out of … [...]
[...] police and pro-junta thugs move in to stop Burma protests Asean charter to proceed despite Burma Burma: Than Schwe’s Irrevokable Public Shame Crackdown on Myanmar monks will affect development: UN envoy S Africa welcomes Myanmar [...]
This story is horrifying and the fact that we’ve just let it go with a comment of condemnation is even more horrifying.
thank you for that Angie. Keep the faith. I know you do. Outrage is a kind of prayer, too. AFAIC, these two images of this soul should have run on the front page of the NYT above the fold. I think every group massacred and enslaved that I’ve known in my lifetime has the same cry to the world: “Let them see, let them see.”
dr.e
Boycott of Burma’s ‘Blood Rubies’ Urged by Rights Advocates
Pornchai Chuenchomlada is the president of the Thai Gem and Jewelry Traders Association in Bangkok. He says a U.S. boycott will not be effective because the high demand for rubies will just drive the stones to the black market.
Pornchai says it is not necessary to boycott the gems, because Burma’s military government showed what he calls restraint during the September crackdown.
“We are a little bit happy because during the protest… the government didn’t kill so many people, it killed some of them. You know, in this situation, we consider it a little bit violent,” he said.
Read full article:
http://voanews.com/english/2007-11-01-voa11.cfm
http://www.thaigemjewelry.or.th/
Please direct this to comment / email to:
Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
I did not mean this for publcation – but simply to make her aware of the following information.
Again I did not mean for this comment (prveiously submitted and identical to the following to be published).
Boycott of Burma’s ‘Blood Rubies’ Urged by Rights Advocates
Pornchai Chuenchomlada is the president of the Thai Gem and Jewelry Traders Association in Bangkok. He says a U.S. boycott will not be effective because the high demand for rubies will just drive the stones to the black market.
Pornchai says it is not necessary to boycott the gems, because Burma’s military government showed what he calls restraint during the September crackdown.
“We are a little bit happy because during the protest… the government didn’t kill so many people, it killed some of them. You know, in this situation, we consider it a little bit violent,” he said.
Read full article:
http://voanews.com/english/2007-11-01-voa11.cfm
http://www.thaigemjewelry.or.th/
Got it, Buzz. Thank you.
dr.e
Dear Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés and all who may read this:
My original comments were meant to inform Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés of the following article.
I did not mean nor intend my correspondence for publication – but now that it as been published – please understand that the following comes from an article written for the Voice of America and are not my own thoughts or words:
The headline is entitled:
Boycott of Burma’s ‘Blood Rubies’ Urged by Rights Advocates by Kate Woodsome
This is an excerpt from that article:
Pornchai Chuenchomlada is the president of the Thai Gem and Jewelry Traders Association in Bangkok. He says a U.S. boycott will not be effective because the high demand for rubies will just drive the stones to the black market.
Pornchai says it is not necessary to boycott the gems, because Burma’s military government showed what he calls restraint during the September crackdown.
“We are a little bit happy because during the protest… the government didn’t kill so many people, it killed some of them. You know, in this situation, we consider it a little bit violent,†he said.
The full article may be read at:
http://voanews.com/english/2007-11-01-voa11.cfm
This following website helps corroborate the article: http://www.thaigemjewelry.or.th/
eww