Junta adds death penalties to arsenal against protests

The Myanmar military’s bloody crackdown on the nationwide resistance to its rule showed no sign of easing Sunday, with a human rights group reporting that the death toll across the country had passed 700.

The security forces killed 82 people in a single city Friday, according to Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which has been documenting the bloodshed since the military’s Feb. 1 coup. Soldiers used machine guns and rocketpropelled grenades to attack an organized group of protesters who had set up barricades to defend part of that city, Bago.

Over the weekend, rights groups accused the military of trying to intimidate protesters with a new tactic: death sentences in a military court. On Friday, state television reported that 23 people had been sentenced to die after a closed trial for killing a soldier on March 26 in Yangon.

The military appears to be targeting centers of resistance around the country, using overwhelming power against largely untrained, poorly armed protesters. In Tamu, a town near the border with India, members of a local defense group similar to the one in Bago claimed to have killed some members of the security forces Saturday after coming under attack.

The security forces’ assault in Bago, about 40 miles northeast of Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, was one of their most lethal yet.

On Friday, a spokesperson for the junta, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, suggested that the military had been exercising restraint since the coup, telling reporters that it could be killing many more people if it wished.

“If we were to actually shoot the protesters with an automatic rifle, the 500 people you are talking about would have died within hours,” he said after being asked about the nationwide toll.

A small, littleknown rebel group called the Kuki National Army, one of many ethnic armed groups that have been fighting Myanmar’s military for years in regional conflicts, said it had helped the Tamu protesters battle the security forces Saturday, but the extent of its involvement was unclear. Some leaders of the protest movement have called on rebel armies to join forces.