2 months after coup, Myanmar teeters on the brink of civil war
YANGON, Myanmar — Protesters on Thursday marked two months since this nation’s military seized power by again defying the threat of lethal violence and demonstrating against the junta’s toppling of the country’s democratically elected government.
Security forces have been unable to crush the massive public resistance to the Feb. 1 coup despite their escalating violence, including routinely shooting protesters. International efforts including sanctions imposed by Western nations on the military regime have failed to restore peace.
In Yangon, the country’s biggest city, a group of young people gathered shortly after sunrise Thursday to sing songs honoring the more than 500 protesters killed so far. They then marched through the streets chanting slogans calling for the fall of the junta, the release of deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and the return of democracy.
Protests were also held in Mandalay and elsewhere.
The demonstrations followed a night of violence that included police raids and several fires. In Yangon, several shops owned in whole or part by Myanma Economic Holdings Ltd., an investment arm of the military, went up in flames. The shops are also targets of boycotts by the protest movement.
The crisis in the Southeast Asian nation has expanded sharply in the past week, both in the number of protesters killed and with military airstrikes against the guerrilla forces of the Karen ethnic minority in their homeland along the border with Thailand.
In areas controlled by the Karen, more than a dozen civilians have been killed since Saturday and more than 20,000 have been displaced, according to the Free Burma Rangers, a relief agency operating in the area.
The U.N. special envoy for Myanmar warned that the country faces the possibility of civil war.
That’s a stark reversal for Myanmar, which before the coup had been making slow progress toward greater democracy after decades of brutal military rule.
The U.N. Security Council late Thursday strongly condemned the use of violence against peaceful protesters in Myanmar and the deaths of hundreds of civilians, but it dropped the threat of possible future action against the military.
A British-drafted statement approved by all 15 council members after intense negotiations that began Wednesday expressed “deep concern at the rapidly deteriorating situation” in Myanmar and reiterated the council’s call on the military “to exercise utmost restraint.”
The original draft was much stronger and would have expressed the Security Council’s “readiness to consider further steps,” which could include sanctions. It also would have “deplored” the use of violence against peaceful protesters and “condemned in the strongest terms the killing of hundreds of civilians by the security forces.”
But at the insistence of China, Myanmar’s neighbor and friend, the reference to “further steps” was eliminated and the stronger language, including the words “killing” and “deplore,” was softened in the final statement, council diplomats said.
The reference to “further steps” was replaced in the final statement with a sentence saying council members “stressed that they continued to monitor the situation closely and would remain actively seized of the matter.”
The final council statement also called “on all sides to refrain from violence” — which diplomats said Russia demanded — and “reiterated the need to fully respect human rights and to pursue dialogue and reconciliation in accordance with the will and interests of the people of Myanmar.”
Also Thursday, Suu Kyi’s lawyer Khin Maung Zaw said that she’s facing a new charge of violating Myanmar’s colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which is punishable by up to 14 years’ imprisonment.
He said Suu Kyi and Australian economist Sean Turnell, who served as her adviser and who also was detained on the day of the coup, were charged on March 25 in a Yangon court. He provided no other details.