Burmese Junta Flexes Muscles

• Blast rattles Yangon on anniversary eve
  An explosion rattled Myanmar's main city, Yangon, on Thursday morning, the eve of the one-year anniversary of a junta crackdown on anti-government protesters, police said.

Peaceful 2007 protest before massive crackdown which ended in the death of monks

Civilians marching around monks to protect them as they demonstrate their opposition


The face of the secretive junta, the military dictators who have made Burma a pariah.

Year After Protests, Myanmar Junta Flexes Muscles
Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) -- Myanmar's junta put armed police and barbed wire barricades on the streets of its main city Friday, the first anniversary of a bloody military crackdown on major anti-government protests.

Security was especially tight near the house of detained opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, and in front of City Hall, where a small bomb exploded Thursday, wounding seven people. Official papers said none of the victims were seriously hurt, and urged public vigilance against the "bombers and terrorists in disguise." No group was blamed for the blast.

Normally in the aftermath of such incidents, the junta immediately points the finger at underground democracy activists or the ethnic guerrilla groups that have fought against the Burmese majority almost since independence from Britain in 1948. More>>

The year of independence, 1948, is significant. It marks the year George Orwell inverted to name his famous novel on totalitarianism -- Ninety Eighty-Four -- which was based on his experiences, having lived in Burma.