An e-mail I just received this afternoon from Ashin Ariyadhamma links to this Newsdesk Special story claiming that General Maung Aye, second-in-command in Burma’s military junta, has stage a coup against Than Shwe. Earlier I saw speculation concerning a split in the junta’s top ranks at mizzima.com, a Thailand-based website reporting news from Burma. The activists at organizations such as Mizzima.com and Irrawaddy.org perform a valuable service by doing their best to report on what’s going on inside Burma, and they provide details (including higher casualty figures) that can’t be obtained from mainstream Western news media (much less from Burma’s corrupt official press.) Nonetheless, they are relying to a large extent on hastily relayed word-of-mouth reports, and some of what appears on those sites must be taken with a grain of salt. Stay tuned.
Post a Comment