THE STRUGGLE FOR BURMA'S SOUL

This is from eyewitness accounts of the recent clashes in Burma, relayed to Time magazine reporters. Read the whole report here.

The battle for Shwedagon began in ferocious noonday heat ... By 12:30 p.m., hundreds of monks, students, and other Rangoon residents approached the police, stood in the road and began to pray. Then the soldiers and police began pulling monks from the crowd, targeting the leaders, striking both monks and ordinary people with canes ... An 80-year-old monk stood with the student, bleeding from a baton gash on his shaven head ... A pause came upon the battle. The monks regrouped at a nearby monastery to march downtown. But first came a chilling display of the people's anger — and the monks' moral influence.

"A man on a motorcycle rode up. Motorcycles have been banned in Rangoon for years, ever since — the story goes — the paranoid generals fear being shot by assassins riding one of them. Most people on motorcycles are therefore assumed to be spies. Thus sensing an enemy, the mob pounced. The man was pulled off his bike and set upon by students and people armed with wooden sticks. "Beat him!" they cried. "Kill him!" Quickly, the monks intervened and ushered him away to the safety of a nearby monastery. The mob, however, set upon his motorbike with clubs and rocks, smashing it to bits."