Standoffs intensify in Myanmar

Police repeatedly used tear gas and rubber bullets against crowds protesting last month’s military coup.

YANGON, Myanmar — Police in Myanmar repeatedly used tear gas and rubber bullets Tuesday against crowds protesting last month’s coup, but the demonstrators regrouped after each volley and tried to defend themselves with barricades as standoffs between protesters and security forces intensified.

Authorities have escalated their crackdown on the protests in recent days. The United Nations said it believed at least 18 people were killed Sunday when security forces fired into crowds, while a rights group said more than 1,000 people were detained over the weekend, including an Associated Press journalist.

Despite the increasingly brutal crackdown, demonstrators have continued to flood the streets — and are beginning to more rigorously resist attempts to disperse them. Hundreds, many wearing construction helmets and carrying makeshift shields, gathered in Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, where a day earlier police had fired repeated rounds of tear gas. They dragged bamboo poles and debris to form barricades, and even threw banana skins onto the road in front of them in a bid to slow any police rush.

The mainly young demonstrators fled each time tear gas canisters were fired but soon returned to their barricades.

Protesters also took up their flags and banners to march through the streets of Dawei, a small city in southeastern Myanmar that has seen almost daily large demonstrations against the coup. One group of demonstrators was targeted by the security forces as it entered a narrow street on its way to pay respects at the house of a man killed in Sunday’s crackdown. Another was attacked on the main street in the city’s center.

Police also dispersed protests Tuesday in Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city.

Some fear the junta’s escalating use of force is meant to provoke a violent backlash by the demonstrators — who have largely remained nonviolent — in order to discredit them and justify an even harsher crackdown. Videos from recent days show a greater number of protesters trying to stand their ground and throw objects at the police.

“I beg the people in Myanmar not to fall in this trap, so to stay peaceful,” U.N. Special Envoy on Myanmar Christine Schraner Burgener said in interview with CNN, acknowledging that it was easier for her, safely away from the violence, to urge peaceful protesting.

She also accused the authorities of spreading rumors about the conditions of people in detention to stir up even more anger on the streets.

The Feb. 1 coup reversed years of slow progress toward democracy in Myanmar after five decades of military rule. It came the day a newly elected Parliament was supposed to take office. Ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party would have been installed for a second fiveyear term, but instead she was detained along with President Win Myint and other senior officials.

GETTY-AFP People protesting last month’s coup take cover behind makeshift shields while being drenched by a water cannon fired at them by police Tuesday in Kale, Myanmar.