Myanmar police flee after orders to shoot activists
UK virus engulfs countries slow to roll out vaccines
Police in Myanmar are fleeing across the border to India after refusing to follow orders from their superiors to shoot protesters.
Two officers told the Daily Telegraph they escaped to India after refusing to shoot people protesting against the military junta, which overthrew the country’s democratically elected government on February 1. They say about 200 members of the police are already in hiding in India.
Activists are warning of a potential humanitarian crisis along India and Myanmar’s 1600km border as rising numbers of citizens also flee the violent crackdown through dense jungle on the border.
Thanga and Mawnga — not their real names — left their posts at the Khampat and Falam police stations in Myanmar on Sunday, evading military patrols to cross into India’s northeastern state of Mizoram. They say they were threatened with up to 13 years in jail after joining the civil disobedience movement.
“The authorities gave us firing orders to shoot our people, saying that they cannot control them and that we have to shoot them. I told them that I cannot shoot my own people,” said Thanga.
Mawnga experienced similar problems. “At first, [we were asked] to use tear gas and rubber bullets to stop the people gathering but now they started using real bullets, and snipers are also involved, shooting people in their heads,” he said.
Amnesty yesterday claimed in a new report the military is using battlefield weaponry against protesters and bystanders.
The group verified more than 50 videos from the crackdown, which it says confirms Myanmar’s military are increasingly armed with weapons that are only appropriate for the battlefield, including sniper rifles.
At least 60 protesters have been killed and more than 1800 have been detained.
Athird wave of the coronavirus is sweeping across large areas of Europe and threatens to engulf many countries quicker than they can hope to vaccinate their citizens.
In Italy, infections have risen by 50 per cent in a fortnight, and there are now 300 deaths a day. In Hungary, infections have more than doubled in 14 days. In the Czech Republic, infections are now so high local immunologists say the country could achieve herd immunity without the help of vaccines.
“Fear has turned into anger and exhaustion,” Italy’s influential La Repubblica newspaper said yesterday. “We’re waiting for the vaccines like pioneers in a Western movie, surrounded by Indians, scanning the horizon and waiting for the cavalry.”
This is the backdrop to the escalating war of words between Britain and the European Union over vaccine exports. The United Kingdom, until recently one of the worst affected countries in the world, now has less to fear from a third wave because of its successful vaccine rollout. But in much of the rest of Europe, where vaccination rates lag behind, governments face a race not with Britain but with the virus itself.
Much of the recent rise in European infections has been fuelled by the new “British variant” of the virus that was first detected in Kent.
“We’ve learnt nothing,” was the weary front-page headline in Italy’s L’Espresso news magazine this week.
The first European country to go into lockdown last year, Italy is facing calls for new restrictions after it crossed the milestone of 100,000 deaths this week. “It is clear that it is necessary to take exceptional measures,” said Vincenzo De Luca, the Governor of the region of Campania.
Yet the picture is far from uniform across the Continent. While Italy and much of central Europe have seen a steep rise in infections over the past two weeks, in Germany and France they have largely plateaued.
Germany, which Angela Merkel declared was in the grip of a third wave a week ago, has not seen a sharp rise in cases, so far at least.
France has been in a third wave since the start of the year but the infection rate has flattened since late January and remains steady, if high.
Spain and Portugal appear to be past the third wave, with infections dropping steeply in both countries. Spain is at its lowest level since August last year, and authorities are trying to strike a balance between maintaining social distancing and reopening the vital tourist sector. Even in the Czech Republic, which is arguably in its fourth wave and has seen the most cases in the world per capita, infections have started to fall.
But vaccination rates remain poor across much of Europe. While the UK has already given a first jab to a third of the population, Germany has managed less than 7 per cent, and France less than 6 per cent.
Yet despite the acrimony over vaccine exports, there is little evidence of shortages in most of Europe. According to the latest EU figures, Germany and France have each used less than three-quarters of their vaccine stocks, while Belgium has used less than a third. That is partly down to public reluctance to take the AstraZeneca jab after European governments cast doubt on its efficacy.
But that is not the whole story. In many European countries, the vaccine rollout appears to have been hampered as much by incompetence as any controversy over AstraZeneca. Germany has used less than half its stocks of the AstraZeneca vaccine — but only a third of its supply of the more popular Moderna jab.
More than three million people from the most at-risk group — over80s and those with serious health conditions — have still not had their first jab and there are reports of people in their 90s unable to get an appointment because of overloaded telephone hotlines.