Repression in Myanmar: at least 18 protesters killed by police and army

At least 18 protesters died and 30 were injured this Sunday in Myanmar by police and military crackdown on protests against the military junta, according to UN data, the bloodiest day since the February 1 coup.

“In various parts of the country, police and military forces have faced peaceful protests using deadly force.”, denounced in a statement today the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet.

According to information gathered by this organization, the deaths occurred following the shooting of demonstrators in Rangoon, the largest city in the country, in Dawei, Mandalay, Bago, Pokokku and Myeik.

Security forces have opened fire indiscriminately to suppress mass protests that They demand that the military return power to the people and release politicians detained after the coup.

In Mandalay, the second most populous city and where the army faces great opposition, one of the protesters died after being shot in the head by a uniform, a witness who helped recover the body, told EFE, while the portal Myanmar now reports 6 gunshot wounds.

In the former capital, a young man died from a gunshot wound when he was shot by the authorities, the channel said. Democratic Voice of Burma, while the newspaper Mizzima reports at least four wounded by bullets fired at a house.

In Dawei, in the south of the country, Police fired several live ammunition at protesters and the local press reported three dead and a dozen injured.

The death toll, which with 18 today, they stand at 22 due to direct fire by men in uniform since the uprising, could increase given the violent crackdown by authorities across the country.

“Burma is a battlefield”said the cardinal Charles Maung Bo, Archbishop of Rangoon, describing the current situation in the country on Twitter.

Police also used this Sunday rubber bullets, tear gas and stun grenades against the demonstrators, who erected improvised barricades in Rangoon to stop the attacks.

Despite the accusations and police violence, protesters repeatedly returned to the streets as tension eased and in defiance of the security forces, supported in the streets of the former capital by military units.

In other cities of the country, such as Bago, Myitkyina or Lashio, police acted violently to suppress opposition movements against the military junta, led by coup general Ming Aung Hlaing, accused of genocide before the Court of The Hague for the military campaign against the Rohingya ethnicity in 2017 in the west of the country.

In Mandalay, a group of protesters arrested five police officers who were traveling in a white car without identity documents. whose safe contained at least half a dozen weapons and plenty of ammunition, take the newspaper The Irrawaddy.

The Foreign Ministry of Indonesia, the Southeast Asian country that has been most active in challenging the military takeover, said in a statement that it was ” deeply concerned at the escalation of violence in Burma which has caused casualties and loss of life ”.

The country “Urges the (Burmese) security forces to refrain from the use of force and to exercise the utmost restraint to prevent further casualties from causing further casualties and the situation from deteriorating.”

The Indonesian Chancellor, Retno marsudi, met Thursday in Bangkok with Wunna Maung Lwin, appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs by the current military junta, without revealing the subjects on which the conversation between the two turned, and with the Thai Minister of Foreign Affairs, Don Pramudwinai, as host.

For weeks, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated against the military junta and demand the release of all those arrested after the coup, including the ousted leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

The public channel MRTV, now under military control, reported last night the arrest on Saturday of 479 people accused of “demonstrations against the state” during one of the most violent days since the uprising.

In the month of demonstrations more than 1000 people are estimated to have been arbitrarily and illegally detained, and that among them are several political leaders, activists, members of civil society organizations, journalists and health professionals.

The United Nations High Commissioner said that today only at least 85 medical professionals, students and seven journalists who participated in the protests have been arrested.

The military junta ensures, for its part, that the police use the minimum of force against the demonstrations, while the official journal “Myanmar’s New Global Light” published this Sunday an article where police threaten to “take legal action” against protest leaders.

The Burmese Foreign Ministry has reported on the dismissal of the Burmese Ambassador to the United Nations, Kyaw Moe Tun, appointed by the overthrown government, after calling on Friday in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly to take strong action to end the military government.

The statement accuses Kyaw Moe Tun of having committed a crime of “high treason” against the country and “of abusing powers and responsibilities” during his speech, which ended with the gesture of raising three fingers popularized by opposition to the military.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Burma, Tom andrews, praised Kyaw Moe Tun’s gesture of “courage” and asked, in a Twitter message, that countries act against the military government.

The army justified the seizure of power with alleged electoral fraud in the November elections, where international observers did not detect any rigging, in which the National League for Democracy, the party led by Suu Kyi, destroyed, as it did in 2015.

Despite the holding of elections and the process begun in 2011 in Burma towards a “disciplined democracy”, as the army – which ruled the country with an iron fist from 1962 to 2011 – the military command has maintained a broad control over the political and economic aspects of the country.

With information from EFE

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