Stallone and his crew were witness to events in Burma while filming Rambo's sequel.
"I witnessed the aftermath - survivors with legs cut off and all kinds of land mine injuries, maggot-infested wounds and ears cut off. We saw many elephants with blown off legs. We hear about Vietnam and Cambodia and this was more horrific.''
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Rambo crew witness Burma atrocities
from news.com.au
HOLLYWOOD star Sylvester Stallone and his Rambo sequel movie crew have witnessed human atrocities while filming along the Burmese border.
"I witnessed the aftermath - survivors with legs cut off and all kinds of land mine injuries, maggot-infested wounds and ears cut off. We saw many elephants with blown off legs. We hear about Vietnam and Cambodia and this was more horrific,'' Stallone told Associated Press.
"Shots were fired over the film crew's heads and we did receive threats," he said.
Stallone was in Burma shooting John Rambo, the fourth movie in the action series, on the Salween River separating Thailand and Burma.
He returned before the Burmese military's violent crackdown against monks and residents participating in the largest pro-democracy protests in Burma in two decades. Burmese journalists estimate between 40 and 50 people have been killed since last Wednesday, with details emerging of some of their fates.
The Burmese army has also waged a war against ethnic groups - raping women and killing innocent victims. Hardest hit have been the Karen - one of several minority groups seeking greater independence and autonomy.
The Rambo script, written long before the current Burma uprising, features boatman John Rambo - a Vietnam War-era Green Beret who specialises in violent rescues and revenge - taking a group of mercenaries up the Salween River in search of missing Christian aid workers in Burma.
Stallone said families of the Burmese extras in the movie were imprisoned. He plans to bring survivors before the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) board to raise the profile of their plight.
"I was being accused, once again, of using the Third World as a Rambo victim. The Burmese are beautiful people. It's the military I am portraying as cruel,'' he said.
Stallone is now editing John Rambo, which will be released in January, and said he was trying to work out whether he was making a documentary of a Rambo movie.
Stallone's next challenge is trying to get an "R" rating from the MPAA.
"This is full scale genocide. I want an 'R' and I want the violence in there because it is reality. It would be a whitewashing not to show what's over there,'' he told Associated Press.
"I think there is a story that needs to be told," Stallone said.
Monks flee Burma
By South-East Asia correspondent Karen Percy
October 2, 2007 - 6:00AM
Source: ABC
Several Buddhist monks have crossed into neighbouring Thailand from Burma through the town of Mae Sot after fleeing a violent military crackdown.
They left Rangoon three days ago after the military junta ordered raids on monasteries around the capital, rounding up the leaders of recent anti-Government protests.
The monks say they saw their colleagues beaten, even killed, and that they do not want to return to their homeland until the streets are calm again.
But they are determined to help fellow monks and others on the inside to maintain their campaign against the Government.
Despite the ongoing threat of violence, the monks say the protesters will not stop until the military junta lowers fuel prices and frees political prisoners, including the winner of the 1990 election, Aung San Suu Kyi, who is being detained by the junta.
Gerald Warner explains why the Left has been so silent on Burma’s tyrants for so long:
Enter the S-word. Out of the statutory post-independence ethnic civil war emerged, in 1962, the dictatorship of the Burma Socialist Programme Party, which proclaimed national salvation through the “Burmese way to socialism”. That way, as usual with socialism, involved the abolition of free elections, free speech and assembly, enforced by imprisonment and torture. Yet here is a funny thing: during the 26 years that one-party socialism ruled Burma, the lack of human rights seems to have escaped the notice of British liberals. The progressive maxim prevailed: you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs.
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