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Nine killed in Myanmar crackdown

Nine people, including a Japanese man, were killed yesterday in a crackdown on anti-government protests, Myanmar's state media said, accusing the pro-democracy opposition of fomenting the unrest.

Another 11 demonstrators were wounded, including one woman, and 31 security forces were also injured, it said in an evening television bulletin.

Scores were also beaten as tens of thousands of protesters, many of them youths and students, played cat-and-mouse with security forces across Yangon yesterday, witnesses said.

The six hours of demonstrations ended after sunset and ahead of a military-imposed curfew, witnesses also said.

A 50-year-old Japanese man, a video journalist working for Tokyo-based video and photo agency APF News, was killed, his employer said, making him the first foreign victim of the unrest.

Hospital sources said he appeared to have been shot.

At least three other people, including one Buddhist monk, suffered gunshot wounds, witnesses said.

Scores of people were beaten as soldiers and police used batons, tear gas and warning shots to break up protests around the city.

Around the Sule Pagoda in downtown Yangon, as many as 50,000 people sang the national anthem and jeered the soldiers, despite being baton charged and having warning shots fired.

Around Pansoedan, just east of Sule Pagoda, 10,000 people led by a handful of Buddhist monks prayed and protested in the streets, waving religious flags as they taunted the military.

Soldiers and police repeatedly charged the crowd with batons. The group broke up around sunset after shots were fired over the crowd.

Meanwhile, China yesterday issued its first public call for Myanmar's military rulers to show restraint in handling the protests, but refused to condemn the ongoing crackdown.

"We hope all parties can exercise restraint and properly handle the situation there to ensure the situation does not escalate," foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu (姜瑜) told reporters.

Jiang repeatedly declined to condemn the killings of peaceful protesters in the crackdown.

Meanwhile, an EU lawmaker said yesterday that EU countries should boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics unless China intervenes in Myanmar,

European Parliament Vice President Edward McMillan-Scott will write to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the EU's Portuguese presidency, asking them to discuss whether athletes should oppose the Beijing games.

"The consensus around the European Parliament is that China is the key. China is the puppetmaster of Burma," McMillan-Scott told Reuters in a telephone interview. "The Olympics is the only real lever we have to make China act. The civilized world must seriously consider shunning China by using the Beijing Olympics to send the clear message that such abuses of human rights are not acceptable."
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