From Mandalay in the central plain to Moulmein on the Andaman Sea, Burma burst into flames last week, the spark provided by protest and bloodshed, the oxygen by rumor. In Sagaing, a city of 70,000 in the center of the country, security forces opened up with shotguns on a crowd of 5,000 that was converging on a police station, and 31 people were reported killed. In the suburbs of Rangoon, the capital, three policemen were reported to have been beheaded by enraged mobs. Word of mutinies by military units in the north and east flickered through the country like fire on...
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