BANGKOK, Oct 1: With protests quashed and many monasteries empty, fears are growing for those who have disappeared into Myanmar’s grim prisons in recent days as rights groups say more than 1,000 are missing.

Amid the pervasive climate of fear in military-ruled Myanmar — where troops patrol streets, news has been stifled, and Internet links cut — observers are struggling to assess just how many have been rounded up.

Security forces have launched overnight raids to pick up more monks and members of the National League for Democracy (NLD), headed by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, herself under house arrest for most of the past 18 years.

Foreign diplomats believe at least several hundred Buddhist monks and political activists were taken away at the height of the bloody crackdown last week against the biggest pro-democracy protests in almost 20 years.

The Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), which has for years kept a close watch on political detainees in Myanmar’s 43 prisons, estimates that up to 1,500 people were locked up last week.

“At least 85 protest leaders, over 1,000 monks, and between 300 and 400 students and activists were arrested,” said AAPP joint secretary Bo Kyi, adding that the detainees were subject to harsh prison conditions.

The Buddhist monks, who were at the forefront of what has been dubbed the “saffron revolution,” were forcibly disrobed and “severely beaten, kicked and insulted” by soldiers and militias, the group said in a statement.

Hong Kong-based organisation the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) said “at least 700 monks and 500 civilians are estimated to have been captured and taken to unknown locations in the last week.” These detainees, as well as 150 people arrested after the protests began in August, “must all be treated as disappeared, not arrested, until their whereabouts and conditions are confirmed,” the group said.Diplomats in Yangon are also trying to assess the true extent of last week’s carnage and the extent of ongoing arrests. Many observers believe the death toll may have been far higher than the 13 known killings.

“We’re hearing stories every night of raids, but by the morning it’s hard to confirm,” said one Western diplomat. “There are fewer and fewer monks to speak to. What have they done to so rapidly silence the monks? That’s the big question that needs to be answered.” The diplomat said that, at least for the moment, the protest movement had been “efficiently suppressed. Many leaders have been arrested.

“The monasteries are empty. They’ve had orders for senior monks to go back to their villages. They’ve really tried to disperse the monk community... The story gets hidden. It’s hard to see which monks have been disappeared.” Observers say many detainees have been taken to the city’s notorious Insein prison, the Government Technological Institute, the police battalion number seven compound, the Kyaikkasan race track and possibly other locations.

“There are enough old and now unoccupied government buildings since the move to (the new capital) Naypyidaw,” said one foreign observer, referring to the junta’s sudden shift of the seat of government that started in late 2005.

Human Rights Watch Myanmar expert David Mathieson said HRW was still trying to find out “who was taken on what day and to where” but added that “it appears that this has been more well planned than last week’s events suggested.”

“People were taken away during the demonstrations, people were arrested at night including in the monasteries, and people were arrested at the weekend at smaller demonstrations and as security forces cleared up the streets,” he said.—AFP