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Published on December 8, 2007

The issue does not top the agenda, but it could be raised as a topic of common interest, said Foreign Minister Nitya Pibulsonggram.

Ban is visiting Thailand from tomorrow to Tuesday to boost cooperation in various fields including development and climate change, said the Foreign Ministry's deputy director of the International Organisation Department, Ittiporn Boonpracong.

The political crisis in Burma caused international outrage as the junta launched a military crackdown on massive protests in late September, killing a score of protesters.

Human Rights Watch said in its report entitled "Crackdown: Repression of the 2007 Popular Protests in Burma" that the crackdown had been fierce, with security forces shooting into crowds with live ammunition and rubber bullets while beating marchers and monks before dragging them onto trucks.

The report documented the slayings of 20 people in Rangoon alone and estimated the death toll to be much higher but was unable to gather information from other cities and towns where demonstrations took place.

The junta arbitrarily detained thousands of people in official and unofficial places of detention, it said.

"The crackdown in Burma is far from over," Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said yesterday. "Harsh repression continues, and the government is still lying about the extent of the deaths and detentions."

The junta-backed organisation the Union Solidarity and Development Association was partly involved in the crackdown, the report said.

Buddhist monk U Khanda said his monastery had been raided by the military on September 27 and many monks had gone missing after that.

"Shouting loudly, they were throwing tear gas and firing their automatic guns into the buildings of the monastery, and they used their batons to beat the monks whenever they saw them," he was quoted as saying in the report.

"I saw pools of blood, shattered windows and spent bullet casings on the floor when I came back to the monastery in the morning. We found about 100 monks missing out of 230," U Khanda said.

The 140-page report was based on more than 100 interviews with eye witnesses in Burma and Thailand. Human Rights Watch says it is the most complete account of the August and September events to date.

The United Nations special rapporteur on human rights, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, said last month in Bangkok after his visit to Burma that the junta admitted it had killed 15 people, including a Japanese journalist. Fourteen corpses were cremated, he said.

It is widely believed that the number of deaths could be more, but no independent source has been able to verify the figure. Pinheiro will present his findings on the clampdown to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday.

Burma's ruling State and Peace Development Council says that overall 2,927 people, including 596 monks, were "interrogated" and almost all have been released. It says nine people have been sentenced to prison terms, while 59 lay people and 21 monks remain in custody.

Human Rights Watch says hundreds of protesters, including monks and members of the "88-generation" students, who led protests until they were arrested in late August, remain unaccounted for.

Supalak G Khundee

 The Nation