The day began with brutality when security forces carried out dawn raids on at least nine monasteries.
At one, where soldiers rammed the gate with a truck, there were bullet casings on the floor and blood on the walls. A monk was reported to have died.
A rumour in Rangoon said that soldiers had disrobed an abbot and made him crawl on the floor like a dog.
Hundreds of monks were arrested. The raids incensed local people, who revere the monks.
But the raids, combined with the presence of soldiers posted outside monasteries, succeeded in keeping most of the monks away from the protests.
Later in the morning near the Shwedagon Pagoda, where the streets are lined with monasteries, there were few people to be seen besides soldiers lying in the shade with their guns.
The city awoke with an air of surreal normality. Policemen led pedestrians freely past their barbed wire, coiled in readiness for the afternoon’s demonstrations.
On the pavements where protesters were later shot down, people sold second hand books and caged song birds like on any normal day.
As usual, the demonstrations started at noon. In the absence of the monks ordinary people and students came to the fore, but the movement seemed leaderless.
It was difficult to estimate the number of demonstrators, who were more dispersed than earlier in the week, but they ran into tens of thousands.
They gathered seemingly spontaneously at different points in the city, and they were under no illusions about the violence they faced.
Trucks mounted with loud speakers warned them to disperse in 10 minutes or face “extreme action”. The protesters jeered.
As the loud speakers counted down the minutes, riot police slowly advanced, beating their clubs against their shields.
Behind them followed the soldiers dressed in green drab, with their rifles and their brightly coloured scarves to signify their platoon.
Soldiers roamed around the city in trucks mounted with heavy machine guns all afternoon.
Reports said that two battle-hardened units, usually deployed against Burma’s oppressed ethnic minorities in the provinces, had been sent to the city.
Cordons were set up all over Rangoon. Near one, the army reportedly ran into a group of students with their truck before opening fire. Yet another report spoke of troops opening fire at a shopping centre.
Hazy accounts of possible atrocities around the city were bewildering and hard to confirm.
Groups of protesters remained on the streets through four hours of this violence, refusing to be defeated by fear and brutality.
There were hundreds of arrests, of protesters or anyone deemed to support them.
“They are hunting us,” a Burmese journalist said by telephone.
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