"Reverend Father, I am Afraid." Painting copyright Kyi May Kaung.From photograph, copyright Citizen Journalist.
Note: I am not a realistic but an impressionistic painter. These sketches don't look like the photograph. There is no saying if the monks in the photograph are the leaders or not. Right now the junta is arresting almost every monk.
An army officer who defected said the remains of executed monks had been dumped in the jungle. At least one photograph of a dead monk, floating face down in a stream, has surfaced on the Internet. He is identifiable as a monk by the way his robe is tied at the waist.
The Burmese language media in exile too may be partly responsible for giving interviewees inside Burma and Rangoon a false sense of security in the early days of the uprising. Now Irrawaddy on line reports they are worried about inside contacts, who are next on the clampdown list. The media in exile will re-evaluate their work practices at a meeting in Chiangmai in November. Aye Chan Naing, head of Democratic Voice of Burma, said all media people have to upgrade their IT skills, as young teenagers with these skills were mostly acting as Citizen Journalists.
U Gambira is the pseudonym of the leader of the All Burma Monks' Alliance, that spearheaded the nationwide protests.
http://www.rfa.org/english/burma/2007/10/18/burma_monk/
Oslo based Democratic Voice of Burma's Maung Too reports today that U Gambira's younger brother, and another brother, also a monk and an HIV/AIDS patient (many monks in Burma contract AIDs through thindone dah or shaving blades used to shave their heads) - were arrested in their home town of Pauk. His mother and sister were also arrested and his father and another sister are on the run.
Sources told DVB that U Gambira's family members would not be released until he is captured.
As "outside activists" and media people, we should be mindful of all who died and are continuing to die in Burma.
Text copyright Kyi May Kaung
