They Have Vanished.(World Affairs)(Buddhist monks)

Byline: This article was written by a NEWSWEEK reporter inside Burma whose name was withheld for safety reasons.

An on-scene report on Rangoon's missing monks

The pagodas of Rangoon are eerily empty. On a normal day they'd be humming with activity. People would be coming to pray, to light incense, to give offerings -- and to enjoy each other's company. These aren't just sacred precincts; they're also social hubs, an integral part of Burma's everyday life. But this is no ordinary day.

It's Burma in the wake of a bloody government crackdown.

In furtive conversations, activists provide new details on the monks' protest -- calling it a carefully calculated and meticulously organized uprising. One opposition source says that before the marches began, a secret conference of senior monks even set quotas on how many participants each monastery would send to the demonstrations. Once the clerics took to the streets, the generals were furious to discover that years' worth of flattery and bribes had clearly not paid off. They unleashed their troops with a vengeance, and activists now say 200 to 300 protesters were killed. The crackdown also targeted monasteries beloved by the Burmese -- both because monks are revered in this highly religious society and because many of the abbeys had been doing a better job providing social services to the poor than had the state.

Outwardly, life goes on. Public transport continues to run, stores are open, young couples still stroll along the riverbanks hand in hand. Yet the tension is palpable. The muggy, rainy-season weather -- overcast and warm -- amplifies the pervasive sense of gloom and quiet indignation. Visitors at the pagoda say their prayers and then linger listlessly, seemingly plagued by the absence of the saffron- and maroon-robed monks who have vanished from view.

Residents living near a technical institute report that it's been converted into a makeshift prison for the monks and say they've seen three to four corpses carried away every night since the arrests began -- presumably the victims of police torture. And the monks aren't the only ones who are disappearing. Every night, soldiers and policemen whisk away ordinary people under the cover of darkness. The security forces have already swept up the ringleaders; now, Rangoon locals say, they're working their way down to the people who stood at the roadside and clapped as the demonstrators passed, or handed out bottles of water to the monks as a sign of solidarity. ...