6 dead in Myanmar
Cops escalate force against protesters
YANGON: Myanmar security forces shot dead at least six protesters yesterday in the bloodiest action so far to smother opposition to the military coup four weeks ago.
The junta is battling to contain a massive street movement demanding it yield power and release ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was detained along with top political allies at the start of the month.
Yesterday brought a significant escalation in force, with fatal shootings of protesters in at least three cities around the country, as police and soldiers attempted to bring the civil disobedience campaign to heel. Three men were killed and at least 20 others injured when security forces moved on a rally in the southern coastal hub of Dawei.
Rescue worker Pyae Zaw Hein said the trio were “shot dead with live rounds”, while the injured were hit by rubber bullets. “More wounded people keep coming in,” he said.
Two teenagers were gunned down in Bago, a two-hour drive north of commercial capital Yangon. Ambulance driver Than Lwin Oo said he had sent the bodies of the 18-year-olds to the mortuary at Bago’s main hospital.
Officers in Yangon began dispersing small crowds minutes before the slated beginning of the day’s protest, with a 23-year-old man shot dead in the city’s east. “His wife is heartbroken,” Win Ko, a social worker who visited the man’s widow, said. “She’s three months pregnant.”
Elsewhere, protesters took up positions behind barricades and wielded homemade shields to defend themselves against the onslaught, with police using tear gas.
Hundreds of people had been arrested by evening and transported to the city’s notorious Insein Prison, where many of Myanmar’s leading democracy campaigners have served long jail terms under previous dictatorships.
One man in Mandalay was taken to hospital in critical condition after a projectile pierced his helmet and lodged in his brain. A doctor in the city, Myanmar’s second-largest, said it was not known whether the 41-yearold had been struck by a live round or a rubber bullet.
At least one journalist documenting yesterday’s assaults by security forces was beaten and detained further north in Myitkyina, according to local outlet The 74 Media. Another reporter was shot with rubber bullets while covering a protest in the central city of Pyay, their employer said.
A spokesman for the ruling junta did not respond to calls seeking comment on yesterday’s violence. Before yesterday, at least five people had died in anti-coup unrest since the army takeover.