By DPA
Oslo : The Myanmar security forces were out in large numbers Monday in the former capital of Yangon, said the Oslo-based opposition radio station Democratic Voice of Burma.
There was “heavy presence of security forces” in Yangon, the station’s news editor Moe Aye told DPA by telephone. But there were no signs of protests in Yangon.
Sources informed the radio station that in the town of Maymyo, some 70 km east of the second largest city of Mandalay, the government ordered people to attend a meeting “to denounce (the) demonstrations and the monks”.
In Yangon, the army and secret police have continued their raids. Some 20 activists were arrested overnight, Moe Aye said.
The station was also receiving many SOS messages from people whose family members were “disappearing,” he said.
According to accounts compiled in Oslo, four monks died Sunday at a temporary detention centre in Yangon, and one monk was reported to have died at a detention centre in Myitkyina in Kachin state near the Chinese border.
Conditions at two temporary detention centres set up near the notorious Insein prison in Yangon were reported to be bad and there was overcrowding, the radio station said.
The radio station had no information about the outcome of the meeting between UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.