MYANMAR PROTESTS CONTINUE...

...despite the United Nations’s fear of violence

YANGON: Demonstrators in Myanmar gathered Wednesday in their largest numbers so far to protest the military's seizure of power, even af ter a UN human rights expert warned that troops being brought to Yangon and elsewhere could signal the prospect of major violence.

UN rapporteur Tom Andrews had said late Tuesday that he was alarmed by reports of soldiers being transported into Yangon, Myanmar's biggest city.

"In the past, such troop movements preceded killings, disappearances, and detentions on a mass scale," he said in a statement issued by the UN Human Rights office in Geneva "I am terrified that given the confluence of these two developments - planned mass protests and troops converging - we could be on the precipice of the military committing even greater crimes against the people of Myanmar." In addition to Yangon, fresh protests also roiled Myanmar's second-largest city, Mandalay, and the capital, Naypyitaw, in defiance of an order banning gatherings of five or more people. But as evening approached, there were no reports of major violence. "Let's march en masse. Let's show our force against the coup government that has destroyed the future of youth and our country," Kyi Toe, a spokesperson for the National League for Democracy party of ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi, wrote on his Facebook page ahead of the protests. Wednesday's turnout in Yangon appeared to be one of the biggest so far in the city. Protesters have adopted a tactic of blocking off roads from security forces by parking their vehicles mid-street with their hoods up, using the excuse of having engine trouble. One motorist, who declined to give his name for fear of repercussions, explained, tongue-in-cheek, that his car had broken down "due to the suffering that our people are undergoing now. We just stopped the cars here on the road to show that we do not want the military regime."