ဘာေတြျဖစ္ကုန္ျပီလဲ..နအဖဟာသူ့ရဲ့စစ္သားေတြကိုမီးသတ္၀တ္စံုေတြ၀တ္ ခိုင္းျပီးေတာ့လူထုကိုဆန့္က်င္တဲ့ပြဲေတြမွာတက္ျပီး၊ေအာ္ခိုင္းေနျပန္ျပီတဲ့

Narinjara News
Sittwe,12 October 2007


Soldiers Attend Rally in Fire Service Uniforms

Army personnel attended the government-backed rally that was held in Sittwe yesterday while decked out in fire service uniforms, in an apparent effort to present themselves as firemen, said a report.

The rally was held by the military authority in Danyawaddy playground in Sittwe from 7:45 am to 9 am on 12 October, with over 100,000 people in attendance. Most of the attendees were USDA members and army families.

Some 300 Burmese ! soldiers attended the rally wearing the uniforms of the fire service and acting as crowd control for the event.

An official from Sittwe fire service confirmed the reports of soldiers donning fire service uniforms, saying the fire services manpower in Sittwe is very small.

A woman who attended the rally said, "There were many firemen at the rally. I had never seen before this number of fire servicemen in Sittwe, I thought they were from rural towns in Arakan State."

At the rally, there were not only disguised army personnel, but also many army families from 60 battalions stationed around Arakan State.

The authority is now holding the government-backed rallies throughout Burma to give the impression of support for the results of the national convention, and to show the solidarity of the people with the military government against the recent monk-led protests.

A source said the authorities forcibly summoned tens of thousands of people for the rally in Sittwe from rural townships like Rathidaung, Pauktaw, Ponna Kyunt, Buthidaung, and Maungdaw, to attend the rally.

Before the n! ight of the rally in Sittwe, the authority ordered over the loudspeakers that all families in Sittwe send at least one person to the rally, and threatened to punish any family that did not comply with the orders.

Many townspeople in Sittwe were compelled to attend yesterday's rally out of fear of retribution by the government if they did not.