Maximum tension in Myanmar: police launch biggest crackdown since coup

RANGÚN.- Burmese police on Saturday launched their most sweeping crackdown in three weeks of protests against the military government in cities across the country., with media reports of a shot dead woman and dozens of people arrested.

The violence comes after the UN envoy to Myanmar urged the organization to use “all means necessary” to stop the February 1 coup.

Myanmar has been in crisis since the military took power and detained elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and numerous leaders of her party, citing fraud in the November election which her party won by an overwhelming majority.

Uncertainty over Suu Kyi’s whereabouts has increasedAs the independent Myanmar Now website quoted officials from her National League for Democracy (NLD) party on Friday as saying that she had been transferred this week since her arrest at her home in an unknown location. The coup led hundreds of thousands of protesters to the streets and drew condemnation from Western countries, including some that have imposed limited sanctions.

More aggressive forces

In some areas, security forces appeared to be more aggressive in using force and arrests, with more plainclothes officers than before. Photos posted on social media showed residents of at least two towns, Rangoon and Monywa, resisted by erecting improvised street barricades in an attempt to block the advance of police.

Authorities made arrests in Rangoon and Mandalay, the two largest cities in the country where protesters took to the streets daily to peacefully demand the restoration of Suu Kyi’s government, which the National League for Democracy won at a large majority in November. elections. The police are increasingly strict in carrying out a council order preventing concentrations of five or more people.

Many other towns and villages also recorded large protests against the military uprising.

In Dawei, in the southeast of the country, and in Monywa, 135 kilometers northwest of Mandalay, police used force against protesters. The two towns, which have fewer than 200,000 inhabitants, have been the scene of great mobilisations.

Unconfirmed reports disseminated on social media on the death of a protester by gunshot in Monywa. The information could not be independently verified but appeared to be credible, with photographs and identification of the victim, although it was later reported by networks that the woman was not dead. Monywa’s reports also spoke of dozens of people arrested.

Walk back

The coup reversed years of slow progress towards democracy after five decades of military rule. Suu Kyi’s party should have taken office for a second five-year term, but the military prevented the opening of parliament and detained her, along with President Win Myint and other senior officials in her government. .

At the General Assembly in New York, Myanmar Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun told other delegates in a moving speech that he represented the “civilian government [de Suu Kyi] elected by the people ”and declared that he supported the fight against the military regime.

MRTV, a state-run television station in Myanmar, broadcast an announcement on Saturday in which the Foreign Ministry noted Kyaw Moe Tun had been dismissed from office for abusing his power and not behaving properly by failing to comply with government instructions and betrayed him.

Moe Tun received applause from many diplomats from the 193 countries that make up the corps and praise from other compatriots on social media, who described him as a hero. The ambassador greeted the three fingers of a raised hand, a gesture adopted by the civil disobedience movement, at the end of a speech in which he spoke in Burmese.

AP and Reuters agencies

THE NATION

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