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WITH protests quashed and many monasteries empty, fears are growing for those who have disappeared into Burma's grim prisons in recent days, as human rights groups say 1500 people may be missing.
As news came that UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari had been given an appointment to meet junta leader General Than Shwe, observers were struggling to assess how many had been rounded up.
Security forces have launched overnight raids to pick up more monks and members of the National League for Democracy, headed by imprisoned Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
Foreign diplomats say several hundred Buddhist monks and political activists were taken away at the height of the crackdown on pro-democracy protests, the biggest in almost 20 years.
The Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which has for years kept a close watch on political detainees in Burma's 43 prisons, estimates that up to 1500 people were locked up last week.
"At least 85 protest leaders, over 1000 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.
Hong Kong-based organisation the Asian Human Rights Commission 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 Rangoon are trying to assess the true extent of last week's carnage and continuing arrests. Only 13 deaths were officially confirmed, but most believe the toll to be far higher. "There are fewer and fewer monks to speak to," said one Western diplomat. "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", with many leaders arrested.
Observers say detainees have been taken to the city's notorious Insein prison, the Government Technological Institute, the police battalion No 7 compound, the Kyaikkasan racetrack 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 in late 2005.
Human Rights Watch Myanmar expert David Mathieson said Burmese prisons were notorious for bad conditions, torture and ill treatment. "The onus of figuring where those people are and what condition they are in is on the shoulders of Ibrahim Gambari," Mr Mathieson said.
"He must come out of the country with some accounting of where those people are and
what condition they are in."
Mr Gambari, dispatched by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to intervene, was allowed to meet Ms Suu Kyi on Sunday.
He also talked with senior leaders in Naypyidaw to convey worldwide outrage over the violence used to put down the demonstrations.
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