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Saturday 11 October 2008

‘They come at three in the morning’

‘They come at two or three in the morning’

A dawn meeting with fugitive monks in a safe house in Burma

Far above us starlings and pigeons fluttered between the beams of St Mary’s Cathedral, whose solid red-brick walls had withstood a terrible earthquake and the Japanese invasion during the second world war. As we queued for communion I noticed that I was the only Westerner there. But I was greeted with smiles of welcome and urged to the front of the line, a kindness I politely declined but which those around me continued to insist on. There is a gentleness about the local manners here which I have never encountered elsewhere. Gentle, that is, until the subject of the regime is brought up.

At several points around the cathedral the priests had placed blackboards upon which they had written a quotation from Psalm 95: Harden not your hearts if you hear his voice today.

The Psalm is an urging towards faith in the darkest of times, urging the Israelites not to be tempted into doubt because of their trials. Rangoon is full of very hard hearts these days. And one might forgive the Burmese of all denominations if they were tempted not only to doubt but to despair. For the spies haunt every corner. I detected at least two of them flitting about the entrance to the Cathedral, keeping a close ear to the sermons, listening for hidden subversions in the liturgy.

Rangoon looks far more ragged and potholed today than when I last visited a decade ago. It is a city of mildewed colonial buildings where the golden domes of the great pagodas are reflected in the pools left behind by sudden and violent rain storms. Back then I came to see the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. It was a time of hope. She had just been released from years under house arrest. Now her lakeside villa is barricaded from the world. The army has erected rows of barbed-wire fences and sandbagged emplacements at either end of the street. What news of Burma and the world she receives is via a shortwave radio and the rare visits of the UN Special Envoy, Mr Gambari.

The outside world has the impression that Burma’s uprising has had its brief moment. Swiftly and efficiently and without even stretching themselves, the military put an end to the protests. The roundups are continuing. Even those who looked on or were bold enough to clap the monks as they marched are being hunted down. Television images and photographs are being scanned by the spies as they try to put names and addresses to faces.

At four o’clock one morning, just after the curfew ended, I was summoned into the still dark streets to meet some fugitive monks. I travelled across the city praying all the way that we would not encounter a military roadblock. How would I explain such a journey at such a time?

More articles from: Fergal Keane | this section

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