One of the protesters' camps burning brightly. |
Burma’s Interior Ministry
has earlier issued an ultimatum to the protesting monks and local farmers to
fold their camps and leave the area by the midnight of 27 November, but the more
than a thousand protestors had refused to follow the government order.
Many small fires had broken
out at various campsites occupied by the protestors and hundreds of monks and
farmers were wounded from the teargas and baton charges and there were some unconfirmed
deaths among the protesters.
Protesting-monks blocking the main entrance to the mine offices just before the police charge. |
Badly burnt leg of a protesting monk. |
“We were at the main camp
just outside Chinese Wanbao Company offices when the police came. They first
announced they would only use their manpower to removes us. They sprayed us
with fire engine hoses and then charged at us at least four five times. But our
crowd wasn’t broken.
So finally they fired those
fire-shells. I don’t know what those shells are exactly called. Those shells
exploded in the air above us and the sparks spread around in the air and then dropped
back down onto the ground below.
Wherever those sparks
dropped fires started. Anyone hit by the sparks also caught fire and the burns
caused their skins to peel off. Those shells were definitely not teargas
shells. Nobody was teary then. That stuff just burned everything and everyone it
touched.