"You should get closer," the Burmese woman, a medical student, told two foreigners ahead of her in the crowd. "If you are there they won't shoot." She was terribly wrong.
A group of protesters, thousands strong, massed on the corner of Anawratha and Sule Pagoda Roads. Facing them were dozens of soldiers and riot police. It was just after 1 p.m.
There were only a handful of monks in the crowd. On any other recent day, thousand of their brethren would be streaming from the Shwedagon Pagoda some 2 miles to the north, on their march into downtown Rangoon. But this morning the Shwedagon was closed and its approach roads guarded by soldiers and riot police. And last night, according to reports, many monasteries had been raided and hundreds of monks arrested.
The protesters were peaceful and buoyant. They chanted religious sutras, meant to express the Buddhist notion of metta, or loving kindness. These have been chanted at every rally, every march, and even those who do not speak Burmese will know their melodies by now. The protesters sing,
Let everyone be free from danger
Let everyone be free from anger
Let everyone be free from hardship
"You should get closer," the student had said. But everyone was close enough, perhaps a hundred yards from the barricades. The courage of the protesters was inspiring but the news had been grim. That morning a Burmese source said that 30 bodies had been dumped at Rangoon General Hospital the night before. The report is unconfirmed but, having seen the Burmese junta and its troops in action, western observers do not find it difficult to believe.
Emotions passed through the dense crowds as if passing through a single body. Suddenly, over hundreds of heads, more trucks pulled up at the intersection, filled with soldiers. The protesters close by must have seen something — perhaps the expression of men who would not hesitate to open fire, perhaps already preparing to shoot.
There was no warning from the soldiers, just from the crowd. It tensed as one.
There was one, perhaps two explosions — smoke bombs, meant to shock and disorient — and then gunfire, but by then everyone was scattering and running. Seconds later, more gunfire. "Were they firing over our heads? Impossible to tell," one foreigner told TIME. But at a spot barely 10 meters from where everyone had been standing, lay the body of a foreigner on the road.
"I still don't know his name," the same foreigner told TIME "I had seen him moments before, photographing the crowd and the soldiers, absorbed and — like Burma's democrats — utterly fearless. I still don't know if he is dead, but it seems almost certain he was shot in the back as we all ran." Later a witness at a nearby tall building saw him lying on the ground. "I saw him lift one of arms up for help, but the soldiers just ran past him," she said. "Then he stopped moving." He was a big man: 6 soldiers lugged him away "like a sack of hammers," another witness said.
The rest of the crowd dispersed. "We ran along the pavements, keeping low, desperately seeking shelter, chased by gunfire and explosions," said one breathless participant. "The nearest side street was 33rd Street, narrow like so many in the downtown area, and it was a seething bottleneck of people: sitting ducks. So we ran on and ran north up 34th Street, and were still running by the time we reached the end of it."
"People said the soldiers had used tear gas," another person who was at the gathering said. "I know for a fact they didn't, because we never felt its sting in our eyes."
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