“Many more people have been killed in recent days than you’ve heard about,” Hla Win said. “The bodies can be counted in several thousand.”

Here is some additional detail from General Win, referred to in this passage by his title: The 42-year-old chief of military intelligence in Rangoon’s northern region added: “I decided to desert when I was ordered to raid two monasteries and force several hundred monks onto trucks. “They were to be killed and their bodies dumped deep inside the jungle. I refused to participate in this.”

The General is seeking political asylum in Norway, according to The Norway Post. A Norwegian freelance journalist told The Post that he met with General Win in a jungle hideout near the border with Thailand.

Norway has deep ties to the opposition movement in Myanmar, formerly called Burma, through the Democratic Voice of Burma, which runs a robust news operation out of Oslo. So far, it has posted no English-language reports of Win’s reported defection, but it referred to him in an earlier piece as a “local commander” in Yangon.

Aside from the Burmese General’s account, other reports seemed to suggest that we may now be watching the aftermath of a very bloody crackdown just a week after 1,00,000 protesters took to the streets. The Irrawaddy, one of the leading Burmese news sources, headlines its article today on the crackdown “Burma Erupts: Killing Field.”

And Liselotte Agerlid, a Swedish diplomat who visited Burma on Sunday, left no room for hope in comments to the Daily Mail. “The Burma revolt is over,” she said.