Police in Myanmar flee to avoid killing
POLICE officers have told how they fled to India after refusing to carry out orders for Myanmar’s military to kill or harm anti-coup protesters.
‘I was given orders to shoot at protesters. I told them I can’t,’ said one 27-year-old defector.
‘I told my boss I couldn’t do that, and that I was going to side with the people. The military is edgy. They are becoming more and more brutal.’
The officer, who has served for nine years, was among a dozen who spoke
anonymously to the BBC from the state of Mizoram in India. More than 100 have fled there, say local officials.
Close to 2,000 people have been arrested and the death toll is more than 60 since the Myanmar military coup on February 1. Security forces have responded to near-daily public protests with tear gas, water cannon, rubber bullets and live rounds.
Yesterday, hundreds of police and soldiers arrived at Ma Hlwa Gone railway station in Yangon as more than 800 workers went on strike.
‘Around 300 security personnel are blocking the road,’ a 32-year-old woman who escaped from the site said. ‘I just hope they don’t arrest people. If they do, it is troubling as they could beat and kill them.’
GHISLAINE MAXWELL’S brother has said he recognises the setting of a photo of the Duke of York with a teenager who says the royal had sex with her.
Ian Maxwell said he had no light to shed on the infamous image – allegedly taken in his sister’s Mayfair home – which both she and Prince Andrew have suggested is a fake.
But he told BBC Radio 4’s Today: ‘I do recognise that setting.’
The photo shows Andrew with his arm around Virginia Roberts, now Giuffre, during the 1990s.
Ms Giuffre says the duke, 61, had sex with her on three occasions, which he strongly denies, saying that he has ‘no recollection’ of meeting her.
The American accuser, now 37, says she had been recruited aged 17 by British socialite Maxwell to be trafficked by the billionaire US financier Jeffrey Epstein and sexually abused from 1999 to 2002.
Mr Maxwell went on Today to discuss the plight of his sister – awaiting trial in a New York jail over claims she procured three teenage girls for Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 1997.
The businessman and think-tank founder, 65, said he did not know if Andrew would be called as a defence witness. But asked if his sister, 59, still considered the royal a friend, he said: ‘I would assume that she does, yes.’
Mr Maxwell added his sister was in effective ‘ isolation’ and under 24-hour surveillance with ten cameras. He said
she was not a suicide risk and her treatment was ‘a grotesque overreaction’.
He couldn’t discuss her relationship with Epstein, adding: ‘I didn’t see them together. I think only once in my entire life, in a social situation.’
Epstein, 66, killed himself in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial.