Defying deadly crackdown, crowds once again protest Myanmar coup
Sources put death toll in the 20s
YANGON, Myanmar — Police in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city, fired tear gas Monday at defiant crowds on the streets protesting last month’s coup, despite reports that security forces had killed at least 18 people a day earlier.
The protesters were chased as they tried to gather at the Hledan Center intersection, their usual meeting spot. Demonstrators scattered, but later regrouped.
The coup reversed years of slow progress toward democracy in Myanmar after five decades of military rule. It came Feb. 1, the same day a newly elected Parliament was supposed to take office. Ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party would have led that government, but she was detained, along with President Win Myint and other senior officials.
The army has leveled several charges against Suu
Kyi — an apparent effort by the military to provide a legal veneer for her detention and potentially to bar her from running in the election the junta has promised to hold in one year.
Following her detention, the 75-year-old Suu Kyi was initially held at her residence in the capital of
Naypyitaw, but members of her National League for Democracy party now say they don’t know where she is.
Since the takeover, protests in cities across the country have been growing — and the junta’s response has become increasingly violent.
The U.N. said it had “credible information” that at least 18 people were killed and 30 were wounded across Myanmar on Sunday. Counts from other sources, such the Democratic Voice of Burma, an independent television and online news outlet, put the death toll in the 20s.