Medical workers enlist in protest
Burma police use violence against others; 1 person shot dead
MANDALAY, Burma — Health care workers marched through Burma’s second-biggest city at dawn Sunday, kicking off another day of countrywide protests against last month’s coup. Elsewhere, police used violence against protesters, and security forces shot dead at least one person.
About 100 doctors, nurses, medical students and pharmacists, wearing long white coats, lined up on a main road in Mandalay to chant slogans and voice their opposition to the Feb. 1 coup that toppled the elected civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Mandalay has been a major center of opposition to the takeover, and later in the day engineers there held what has been dubbed a “no-human strike,” an increasingly popular tactic that involves lining up signboards in streets or other public areas as proxies for human protesters.
The protests are part of a civil disobedience movement, including boycotts and strikes, that aims to restore the civilian government and return Burma to its slow march toward democracy that began nearly a decade ago when the military began loosening its grip after five decades of rule.
In recent weeks, however, the numbers of protesters has fallen off, and the death toll has climbed in the face of lethal force by police and soldiers shooting into crowds. The independent Assistance Association for Political Prisoners had verified 247 deaths nationwide.
While Mandalay’s early morning march was unmolested by security forces, at least one protester was shot dead Sunday in Monywa, another central Burma city, according to the online news site Myanmar Now and numerous social media posts.
Myanmar Now, citing a doctor in Monywa, identified the victim as Min Min Zaw, who was shot in the head as he was helping assemble barricades for a protest. Virtually all the dead since the coup have been shot in the head.
Burma is often called Myanmar, a name that military authorities adopted in 1989. Some nations, such as the United States and Britain, have refused to adopt the name change.
Elsewhere, students, teachers and engineers marched in Dawei, a city in southeastern Burma that has become a hotspot for opposition and has seen at least five killings by security forces.
On Sunday, protesters broke into small groups and varied the timing of their marches in an effort to avoid confrontations. In the initial period after the coup, protests there had huge turnouts. But after police stated shooting into crowds, turnouts declined.
According to posts on social media, Rangoon’s Thaketa neighborhood was one of several areas where police fired their guns Sunday. The others included Tachileik and Taunnggyi in Shan State in eastern Burma, and Gangaw, a town in Magway Division in the west-central part of the country.
The protesters’ cause over the weekend received support from demonstrations in several places abroad, including Tokyo, Taipei in Taiwan and in Times Square in New York City.
While nearly 250 deaths have been confirmed since the coup, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners says the actual total is probably much higher.
The group also has confirmed that 2,345 people have been arrested or charged, with 1,994 still detained or sought for arrest.
The military crackdown in Burma has forced scores of refugees over the border into India. India’s state and federal authorities haven’t given any figures, but some state ministers have said the refugees could be in the hundreds.
One Indian village has given shelter to 34 police personnel and one firefighter who crossed into India over the past two weeks. Several Burma police officers say they fled after defying army orders to shoot opponents of the coup. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears of retribution against family members still in Burma.
One of the defectors from Burma police who didn’t share her name said the army ordered them to “arrest, beat, torture the protesters.”
“So we have no choice but to leave our country,” she said
The Associated Press has not been able to independently verify their claims.
India’s federal government and the state of Mizoram are at odds over the influx of refugees.
Earlier, the Mizoram government had allowed refugees to enter and provided them with food and shelter. But last week, India’s Home Ministry told four Indian states bordering Burma, including Mizoram, to take measures to prevent refugees from entering India except on humanitarian grounds.
The ministry said the states were not authorized to accord refugee status to anyone entering from Burma, as India is not a signatory to the U.N. Refugee Convention of 1951 or its 1967 Protocol.
On Thursday, Mizoram’s top elected official, Zoramthanga, wrote to Modi and said “India cannot turn a blind eye” to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in his state.