Myanmar ‘a battlefield’ as 18 die in anti-coup protests
AT LEAST 18 pro-democracy protesters were killed in Myanmar yesterday as police fired bullets, tear gas, water cannons and stun grenades.
In the bloodiest day since the military seized power, there were casualties in Yangon, Dawei and Mandalay.
Teacher Tin New Yee died in Yangon after police arrived to disperse a protest with stun grenades, the victim’s daughter said. A woman in Mandalay was shot in the head.
Footage posted online showed demonstrators running away as police charged at them, makeshift roadblocks being built and several wounded being led away covered in blood.
‘Myanmar is like a battlefield,’ Charles Maung Bo, the Buddhist-majority nation’s Catholic cardinal, tweeted.
There has been continued protest and civil disobedience since the army seized power on February 1 and imprisoned elected government leader Aung San Suu Kyi (pictured), alleging she won the November election by fraud.
But Phil Robertson, of New York-based Human Rights Watch, said: ‘The Myanmar security forces’ clear escalation in use of lethal force... is outrageous and unacceptable.’
State-run MRTV channel said more than 470 people were arrested on Saturday when the crackdown began. It also said Myanmar’s United Nations envoy Kyaw Moe Tun was fired for betraying the country, after he urged the UN to use ‘any means necessary’ to reverse the coup. Suu Kyi, 75, who is charged with illegally importing walkie-talkies, is in court today.