Police Napalmed Anti-Chinese Copper Mine Protesters?

(Direct translation of news articles from the Eleven Media Group.)

One of the protesters' camps burning brightly.

Beginning at 3 in the early morning of November 29 more than 500 Burmese Police had charged at the six illegal protesting camps inside the Letpandaung Copper Mine area and broken the camps and arrested the protesters by using overwhelming force backed by fire engines and teargas.

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.

Police senior officers at the site had repeatedly issued the warnings to the protesters for two whole days to no avail and finally at 3 am today they unleashed a massive battalion of riots police onto the protestors.

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.

Did Police Use Napalm or Any Other Incendiary Devices?

Badly burnt leg of a protesting monk.

The high numbers of protesters with first or second degree burns were pointing out the possibility of police usage of either Napalm or other incendiary devices on the protesters. Followings is an eyewitness account of early morning police charge at the Copper Mine site near Monywa in Middle Burma.

“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.

Most burned are now being treated in nearby monasteries and houses. For some reason monks got burned more severe than laypeople. Some monks are now in Monywa Hospital. But one monk was so badly burnt they sent him to Mandalay Hospital.”

Badly-burnt protesting-monks at Monywa Hospital.