One more killed in Myanmar bloodshed
In Mandalay, Myanmar’s second largest city, hundreds of engineers took to the streets crying “Free our leader” in reference to ousted State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, detained by the military since the first night of the coup.
A 26-year-old man helping at barriers set up in the city to slow security forces died after being shot in the neck, medical officials said.
The killing follows the deadliest day of the crackdown so far on Wednesday, when the UN said at least 38 people were killed as graphic images showed security forces firing into crowds and bloodied bodies dragged away.
In the southern city of Dawei police fired tear gas at demonstrators, while there was defiance despite the danger at protests in the commercial capital Yangon.
“Scared, yeah I’m very scared to stay on the frontline. But we believe in our comrades and we promise to protect each other if someone is injured,” protester Didi, 27, told reporters.
Meanwhile in the country’s north, a number of people have crossed the border into India in a bid to escape the crackdown.
Indian police said nine people had crossed the 1,600km frontier — three of whom were police officers who had refused to take part in putting down protests.
The junta has sought to stop news of the crackdown getting out, choking the internet and banning Facebook, the most popular social media platform in the country.
But live video feeds and recorded footage are leaking out daily, and on Friday the junta suffered its own internet ban as YouTube shut off a number of military-run channels. Friday also saw many parts of the country hit by power cuts for several hours, though it was not clear that this was a deliberate measure in a country where infrastructure is sometimes unreliable. Government agencies attributed the outage to a “system breakdown”.
Last month’s coup brought a crashing halt to a decade-long experiment with democracy in Myanmar, which was previously under military rule for five decades.
The country’s generals have historically had few qualms about brutally suppressing dissent, crushing major protest movements in 1988 and 2007. As in the past, the international community has in the last few weeks sought to cajole and shame the junta into moderation, slapping on sanctions and calling out abuses.
The US has tightened export controls on Myanmar, putting the country in the same category as adversaries Russia and China, and limited the transfer of any equipment with military uses. —