YANGON, Myanmar - The streets of Myanmar's two biggest cities were eerily quiet on Saturday after a brutal crackdown on demonstrators seeking to end 45 years of military rule. Soldiers quickly snuffed out one small demonstration in Yangon, dragging several men to waiting trucks.
The U.N. dispatched one of its chief negotiators to the country to try to persuade the government to ease the crackdown but many demonstrators were losing hope, with soldiers and police seizing control of the streets and sealing Buddhist monastaries to prevent the saffon-robed monks who led the protests from resuming their marches.
Some 300 die-hard protesters, waving peacock-emblazoned flags of the democracy movement, marched down a street in Chinatown to applause on Saturday, but everybody ran when the soldiers arrived. Housewives and shop owners taunted troops and then quickly disappeared into alleyways.
It was not immediately clear if the U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari would meet junta leader Gen. Than Shwe during his brief visit to Naypitaw, the remote new bunker-like capital where the country's military leaders are based, or pro-democracy figures like Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent nearly 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest.
Western diplomats said it was unlikely, noting that the schedule had been set by the government, but the envoy told reporters before arriving "I expect to meet all the people that I need to meet."
"Gambari is coming, but I don't think it will make much of a difference," said one hotel worker, who like other residents asked not to be named, fearing retaliation. "We have to find a solution ourselves."
Local pessimism about Gamabari's visit was reflected by diplomats as well: "We are not very hopeful, but it's the best shot we have," Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said at the United Nations in New York.
Daily protests began last month and had grown into the stiffest challenge to Myanmar's ruling junta in decades. They were initially started by people protesting massive fuel price hikes, with crowd sizes mushrooming to tens of thousands after monks joined in.
The junta, which has a long history of snuffing out dissent, started cracking down Wednesday, when the first of at least 10 deaths was reported, and then let loose on Thursday, shooting into a crowd of protesters and clubbing them with batons.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, citing unconfirmed witness reports, said he thought the death toll was likely many times higher. One exiled dissident group put it at around 200.
The two biggest cities, Yangon and Mandalay, were quiet on Saturday.
"I don't think that we have any more hope to win," said a young woman who took part in a massive demonstration Thursday in Yangon that was broken up when troops opened fire on the crowd. She was separated from her boyfriend and has not seen him since.
"The monks are the ones who give us courage," she said, referring to the clergymen who have been the backbone of rallies — both those of this week and in past years. Most are now besieged in their monasteries, penned in by locked gates and barbed wire surrounding the compounds.
Images of bloodied protesters and fleeing crowds have riveted world attention, raising fears of a repeat of a 1988 democracy uprising that saw an estimated 3,000 protesters slain.
The United States urged "all civilized nations" to press Myanmar's leaders to end the crackdown, which has also resulted in hundreds of arrests. Win Mya Mya, an outspoken member of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party, was among those seized overnight, according to family members.
Authorities have also gone after the Internet, which has played a crucial role in getting news and images of the democracy protests to residents and the outside world alike. Few foreign journalists have been permitted to operate and media freedom is severely restricted.
"They don't want the world to see what is going on there," Scott Stanzel, a spokesman for the U.S. government, told reporters in Washington.
The United Nations said it feared the unrest could impede its efforts to feed some 500,000 people. Authorities already have placed restrictions on the movement of food in some areas around Mandalay, Josette Sheeran, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, said in a statement from New York.
Though Myanmar is rich in natural resources, 90 percent of its 54 million people live on less than $1 a day.
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