Troops holding 1,000 people at Yangon campus: officials

A Myanmar official, talking on condition of anonymity as he is not allowed to speak to reporters, said up to 1,700 people were detained at the campus of the Government Technical Institute.

The group included about 200 women, and at least one Buddhist novice monk believed to be 10 years old, he added.

They were being kept on the campus inside a windowless warehouse, where the monks have been disrobed and many of them were refusing to eat, he added.

Some have simply refused to accept food from the military, or rejected it because the food arrives in the afternoon when monks are barred by religious oath from eating, the official said.

Tony Banbury, Asia regional director for the UN World Food Programme, said it was concerned by reports that the detainees were being moved to a new and unknown location.

He said in Bangkok that the United Nations had received confirmation about 1,000 people were detained at the institute, held in what Banbury described as military barracks.

“There are reports now that those people — numbering perhaps around 1,000, including monks, students,—have been moved outside those barracks to an undetermined location,” he said.