‘Refused to open fire’: Cop who fled Myanmar
CHAMPHAI: When Tha Peng was ordered to shoot at protesters with his submachine gun to disperse them in the Myanmar town of Khampat on February 27, the police lance corporal said he refused.
“The next day, an officer called to ask me if I will shoot,” he said. The 27-year-old refused again, and then resigned from the force. On March 1, he said he left his home and family behind in Khampat and travelled for three days, mostly at night to avoid detection, before crossing into India’s northeastern Mizoram
state.
“I had no choice,” Tha Peng said on Tuesday. He gave only part of his name to protect his identity.
Tha Peng said he and six colleagues all disobeyed the February 27 order from a superior officer, whom he did not name.
The description of events was similar to that given to police in Mizoram on March 1 by another Myanmar police lance corporal and three constables who crossed into India, according to a classified internal police document seen by Reuters.
The document was written by Mizoram police officials and gives biographical details of the four individuals and their account of why they fled.
“As the Civil disobedience movement is gaining momentum and protest(s) held by anticoup protesters at different places we are instructed to shoot at the protesters,” they said in a joint statement to Mizoram police.
“In such a scenario, we don’t have the guts to shoot at our own people who are peaceful demonstrators,” they said.
YANGON: Myanmar security forces launched tear gas and surrounded hundreds of anti-junta protesters at two places in Yangon on Wednesday, witnesses said, prompting the US embassy to call for their withdrawal.
In New York, the UN Security Council failed to agree on a statement that would have condemned the coup in Myanmar, called for restraint by the military and threatened to consider “further measures”.
Talks on the statement would likely continue, diplomats have said, after China, Russia, India and Vietnam all suggested amendments late on Tuesday to a British draft, including removal of the reference to a coup and the threat to consider further action.
Police stormed a compound in Yangon housing railway staff and surrounded hundreds of protesters in North Okkalapa district, in another part of the city, on Wednesday. More than 100 people were arrested at the two sites, witnesses said.
Many of the railway staff are part of a civil disobedience movement that has crippled government business and included strikes at banks, factories and shops since the army ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government on February 1.
“We are seeing reports of innocent students and civilians surrounded by security forces in
North Okkalapa, as well as arrests,” the US embassy said in a statement.
“We call on those security forces to withdraw from the area, release those detained, and allow people to depart safely.”
On Tuesday, Zaw Myat Linn, an official from Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), died in custody after he was arrested, the second party figure to die in detention in two days. “He’s been participating continuously in the protests,” said Ba Myo Thein, a member of the dissolved upper house of parliament. The cause of death was not clear.
In a symbolic gesture, an announcement posted on the NLD’s Facebook page on Tuesday
said ousted lawmakers had appointed Mahn Win Khaing Than, who was the upper house speaker, as acting vice-president to perform the duties of arrested President Win Myint and leader Suu Kyi. Mahn Win Khaing Than’s whereabouts were not known.
The US is “repulsed” by the Myanmar army’s continued use of lethal force against its people and is continuing to urge the military to exercise “maximum restraint”, state department spokesman Ned Price said on Tuesday.
The army has justified the coup by saying that a November election won by the NLD was marred by fraud - an assertion rejected by the electoral commission. It has promised a new election, but has not said when that might be held.
The Myanmar junta has hired a high-profile Israeli-Canadian lobbyist Ari Ben-Menashe and his firm, Dickens & Madson Canada, for $2 million to “assist in explaining the real situation” of the army’s coup to the US and other countries, documents filed with the US justice department show.