Myanmar police forces fire rubber bullets on protesters as UN diplomat breaks ranks
pected criminal gang attacked the Government Girls Science Secondary School in the country’s third school attack in less than three months - a series that has revived traumatic memories of the ‘Chibok girls’ kidnapped by extremists nearly seven years ago.
Zamfara State Police Command, working with the military, ‘commenced a joint search and rescue operations with a view to rescuing the 317 students’, police spokesman Mohammed Shehu said.
The situation in Jangebe was tense as local people vented their anger on journalists, security personnel and officials who arrived in the village.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari condemned the latest kidnapping as ‘inhumane and totally unacceptable’.
‘This administration will not succumb to blackmail by bandits who target innocent school students in the expectations of huge ransom payments,’ he said in a statement on Friday.
Yangon, Myanmar - Myanmar police fired rubber bullets to disperse protesters in Yangon on Saturday, after the country’s ambassador to the United Nations broke ranks to make an emotional plea for action against the military junta.
The country has been shaken by a wave of protests since a coup toppled civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1.
Authorities have ramped up the use of force to suppress dissent, deploying tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets to disperse some protests. Live rounds have been used in isolated cases.
In Myanmar’s biggest city Yangon on Saturday, police used rubber bullets to disperse a demonstration at Myaynigone junction, the site of an hours-long standoff the day before.
“What are the police doing? They are protecting a crazy dictator,” the protesters chanted as they were chased away by the police.
Hundreds of ethnic Mon protesters had gathered there to commemorate Mon National Day and protest the coup, joined by other minority groups.
They scattered into residential streets and started building makeshift barricades out of barbed wire and tables to stop the police. Many wore hard hats and gas masks, wielding homemade shields for protection.
At least 20 protesters were arrested, a police official confirmed.
Local reporters broadcast the chaotic scenes live on Facebook, including the moments when the shots rang out, which AFP reporters on the ground also witnessed.
“We will try to find another way to protest - of course, we are afraid of their crackdown,” said protester Moe Moe (23), who used a pseudonym. “We want to fight until we win.”
At least three journalists were among those detained, including an Associated Press photographer, a video journalist from Myanmar Now, and a photographer from the Myanmar Pressphoto Agency.
At nearby Hledan junction several rounds of stun grenades were fired, according to AFP reporters, and a police source said more than 140 people had been arrested. Another protest near a shopping centre in nearby Tamwe Township was broken up by police.
Similar scenes of chaos played out across Myanmar as demonstrators entered their fourth week of daily protests against the junta.