U.S. Envoys’ Dependents to Leave Burma : ‘Precautionary’ Step Taken as Troops Patrol, New Protest Looms

The U.S. Embassy in Rangoon on Wednesday ordered the evacuation of nearly 100 staff dependents after a major outbreak of looting brought the army back into the streets of Burma’s capital for the first time in nearly three weeks.

Ross Petzing, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, said the 95 dependents are being sent out of Rangoon as a “precautionary measure.” The 55 members of the embassy staff are expected to stay behind in Rangoon, where the embattled government faces an opposition-engineered general strike today.

Truckloads of troops patrolled Rangoon after looters ransacked warehouses and factories late Tuesday and early Wednesday. More government workers walked off their jobs, and army personnel took over at Rangoon Radio, where workers were on strike.

Looters Warned of Shooting

With soldiers at the controls, the state-run radio announced that “defense forces and the people’s police force shall open fire to impose control should they find that these looters, bent on violence, continue their acts.” A later broadcast said five looters had been killed by troops in the past 24 hours.

The radio station said the warning “does not concern those people who are demonstrating peacefully” against the government.

Student protest leaders called for an open-ended general strike beginning this morning if President Maung Maung’s government does not give way to an interim regime.

There was no indication that the government intends to step aside, however. Instead, Rangoon Radio ordered demonstrators to stay away from the Parliament building next Monday, which is the day a special congress of the ruling party is scheduled to consider Maung Maung’s proposal for an open political system in Burma.

Protesters to Show Power

“We hope to show the government that we can paralyze the whole machinery if we so wish,” opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi said Wednesday night as preparations for the general strike continued.

Although hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters are expected to march in Rangoon today, the city was described as tense but quiet Wednesday after the looting abated.

“The streets are deserted. People are pretty much in fear of their property,” a diplomat in Burma told a news agency reporter. “Things have pretty much closed down.”

The government, which according to diplomatic reports is still guided by Burmese strongman Ne Win, lifted martial law in the capital and halted military patrols after bloody demonstrations drove Sein Lwin, Ne Win’s handpicked successor, from the presidency Aug. 12. Ne Win had resigned in July.

Demanded Interim Rule

Maung Maung, who became Burma’s third president in less than a month, announced his support of the opposition’s call for a multiparty democracy and ordered the congress of the Burma Socialist Program Party to endorse a referendum on the issue. But the opposition, bolstered by defections from the government’s ranks, refused to wait and demanded the immediate installation of an interim government.

Today’s strike to press the opposition’s demands will put demonstrators and the army face to face in the streets. Despite the government’s announcement that peaceful protests will not be curtailed, the atmosphere in the capital is increasingly dangerous.

The Rangoon embassies of Italy and Israel already have sent their staff dependents out of the country, according to reports reaching Bangkok, and officials at the Australian Embassy said they will put their families “on the next available flight” if the situation does not improve immediately. Walkouts by workers at Rangoon’s international airport have sharply limited flights in the past week.

Warehouses, Factories Looted

According to reports from Rangoon, looters broke into the Customs Department warehouse, the Institute of Medicine at Rangoon University, an Education Department building, textile and soap factories and more than 10 rice warehouses.

“People are afraid,” a diplomat there was quoted as saying Wednesday. “There have been numerous clashes between looters and local citizens’ committees trying to preserve order. We have received reports of killings and beheadings.”

Witnesses told reporters that hundreds of looters cleaned out three charcoal boats early Wednesday and sold the fuel to crowds gathered on the river bank.

“No one dared to prevent the looting, as a good many of the people were armed with knives, iron rods and slingshots,” one witness said.

U.N. Office Ransacked

Another report said looters struck the Rangoon office of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, hauling away air conditioners and office equipment.

At the Rangoon University Medical School, classrooms were wrecked and laboratory skeletons were taken out and hanged from trees.

Several diplomats attributed the looting to Rangoon’s poor, who have grown desperate in the past few weeks as transport strikes and shop shutdowns have dried up supplies in the capital.

“Sheer hunger played a part,” one said.

But many Burmese accused the government of hiring provocateurs to loot stores and warehouses in what they said was an attempt to create disorder as a pretext for a military crackdown.