U.N. says 18 killed in Myanmar crackdown
Security forces in Myanmar opened fire and made mass arrests Sunday as they sought to break up protests against the military’s seizure of power, and a U.N. human rights official said it had “credible information” that at least 18 people were killed and 30 were wounded.
That would be the highest single-day death toll among protesters who are demanding that the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi be restored to power after being ousted by a Feb. 1 coup. About 1,000 people are believed to have been detained Sunday.
“Deaths reportedly occurred as a result of live ammunition fired into crowds in Yangon, Dawei, Mandalay, Myeik, Bago and Pokokku,” the U.N. Human Rights Office said in a statement referring to several cities, adding that the forces also used tear gas, flash-bang grenades and stun grenades.
“We strongly condemn the escalating violence against protests in Myanmar and call on the military to immediately halt the use of force against peaceful protesters,” its spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani was quoted saying.
The Democratic Voice of Burma reported that as of 5 p.m. in Myanmar, there had been 19 confirmed deaths in nine cities, with another 10 deaths unconfirmed. The independent media company broadcasts on satellite and digital terrestrial television, as well as online.
DVB counted five deaths in Yangon and two in Mandalay, the largest and second-largest cities.
It registered five deaths in Dawei, a smaller city in southeastern Myanmar that has seen tens of thousands of protesters nearly every day since the coup. Witnesses said Sunday’s march was also large and people were determined not to be driven off the streets.
Confirming the deaths of protesters has been difficult amid the chaos and general lack of news from official sources, especially in areas outside Yangon, Mandalay and the capital of Naypyitaw. But in many cases, photos and video circulated showed circumstances of the killings and gruesome photos of bodies.
The independent Assistance Association of Political Prisoners reported it was aware that about
1,000 people were detained Sunday, of whom they were able to identify 270. That brought to 1,132 the total number of people the group has confirmed being arrested, charged or sentenced since the coup.
“The world is watching the actions of the Myanmar military junta, and will hold them accountable,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for New Yorkbased Human Rights Watch. “Live ammunition should not be used to control or disperse protests and lethal force can only be used to protect life or prevent serious injury.”
Mass gatherings took place in Jerusalem on Sunday as Israelis celebrated the Jewish holiday of Purim in violation of coronavirus restrictions.
Authorities had been concerned about a repeat of last year, when Purim celebrations helped fuel an initial wave of the coronavirus in the earliest days of the global pandemic.
The government urged people to celebrate at home this year, and police attempted to block traffic from entering Jerusalem and declared strict limits on public gatherings.
But the restrictions were not able to prevent street parties, as well as mass prayer celebrations in ultraOrthodox areas, which have repeatedly flouted safety rules.
With traffic clogged at the entrance of Jerusalem, Israeli TV stations showed videos of ultra-Orthodox families walking along the side of the highway into the city.
Purim marks the victory of Jews over a tyrant in ancient Persia and is celebrated with costumes, drinking and parties.
The holiday was celebrated nationwide over the weekend, with Jerusalem celebrating a day later than the rest of the country. Similar safety violations took place in both secular and religious areas of the country.
The celebrations have threatened to undercut Israel’s successful vaccination campaign.
The country has vaccinated most of its adult population, but younger Israelis in their teens, 20s and 30s have been slow to get inoculated.
The 15-member Caribbean Community Friday called for fair, transparent and equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, noting that some wealthy countries have an abundance of supply while many poorer nations have not received a single dose.
“So far, all that we have received are 170,000 doses gifted to a couple nations from the government of India,” said Trinidad and Tobago
Prime Minister Keith Rowley, chairman of the regional bloc known as CARICOM. “Barbados and Dominica, who received these gifts, graciously shared them around to many of us. This was done by them even as others with millions of doses that they can’t use immediately are refusing to make way for others at the manufacturers’ shipping line.”
Rowley made the call on behalf of the bloc during a virtual appearance sponsored by the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center. His plea comes as most Caribbean and Latin American nations continue to wait on deliveries of COVID-19 vaccines from a slow-moving United Nations-backed facility known as COVAX, and as worldwide vaccine shortages and quickly spreading variants of the coronavirus increase the urgency for relief.
Ensuring that the U.N.backed facility, which made its first delivery to Ghana this week, works to the benefit of small and middle-income countries, like those in the Caribbean, is one area where the United States could play a leadership role, Rowley said, as he welcomed the Biden administration’s commitment to channel $4 billion in it over the next two years. He urged wealthier countries to ensure part of the vaccine supply goes to COVAX.
“The United States more than any other county can change what’s happening right now,” Rowley said. “Unfortunately, what has happened and is happening is ...the larger more powerful countries with more influential politics and fatter wallets are literally dominating the supply and distribution of what vaccines are available.”
Earlier this week, the director of the Pan American Health Organization, Dr. Carissa Etienne, said that increasing access to COVID-19 in the Americas should be a global top priority. Etienne said it is not acceptable that only 28 countries and territories in the region have received vaccines through bilateral deals or from other countries like India.
“Our region has been hit harder by the pandemic than any other and millions remain vulnerable to infection and death,” Etienne said. “The lifesaving power of vaccines should not be a privilege for the few, but a right for all.”
During his speech to the Atlantic Council, Rowley said some small islands in the tourism-dependent Caribbean have had their economies decimated. The virus has forced the closure of borders, crippled growth and fueled a debt crisis that is erasing economic gains. He made a strong appeal for debt relief and access to low-income loans.
While ensuring that as many Caribbean nationals are vaccinated as early as possible against COVID-19 is the top priority for CARICOM, Rowley said the regional bloc is also concerned about security, prosperity, energy, education and health.
“This juncture in time is an excellent opportunity to reset relations between the United States and our region, on these very issues,” he said.
As part of that new relationship, Rowley said CARICOM wants to see a “dispassionate, early review of the United States’ “scorched earth policy” toward Venezuela and a thawing of relations between the U.S. and Cuba.
“We know the nature of the issues and the history of the challenges in both areas,” Rowley said. “However, we were very disappointed when the United States recently reversed the very welcome, halting steps toward normalization of the relationship; and most recently the announcement of the unconvincing designation of Cuba as a terroristsponsoring state.”
While CARICOM has always been united on its Cuba position, the bloc under the previous Trump administration found its relationship with both the U.S and fellow members tested as they divided on the subject. Rowley said Friday that the U.S.’s “ineffective, harsh policies and sanctions are contributing immensely to widespread additional discriminate suffering in this Caribbean nation.”
With Venezuela, Caribbean leaders want the U.S. to “give the dialogue a chance. Norway has encouraged that and so did Mexico. The United States once again has the stature and the interest to bring the Venezuelan parties to a table.”
Hanging on the wall in my office is the framed cover of the inaugural issue of The Brownies’ Book, a monthly periodical for Black youths created by W.E.B. Du Bois and other members of the NAACP in 1920.
The magazine — the first of its kind — includes poems and stories that speak of Black achievement and history, while also showcasing children’s writing.
Although much of American children’s literature published near the turn of the last century — and even today — filters childhood through the eyes of white children,
The Brownies’ Book gave African-American children a platform to explore their lives, interests and aspirations. And it reinforced what 20th-century American literature scholar
Katharine Capshaw has described as Du Bois’ “faith in the ability of young people to lead the race into the future.”
Most likely inspired by The Brownies’ Book, several Black weeklies created their own children’s sections. While the children’s publishing industry may have shut out Black voices and perspectives, the editors of these periodicals sought to fill the void by celebrating them.
NO STEREOTYPES
The cover image of that first issue of The Brownies’ Book, published in January 1920, epitomizes this effort: A young Black girl stands on the tips of her toes, dressed in a ballet costume.
Already, this image represented a radically different vision of Black childhood. Children’s literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries rarely focused on African Americans. The few Black children who did appear in print were often written or drawn as variations of Topsy, the enslaved young girl from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” who initially is considered “naughty” only to be redeemed by Eva,
who plays the role of the “white savior.”
As children’s literature scholar Michelle H. Martin has noted, “Children who wanted to read about
Black characters in children’s literature could read about buffoons, mammies, Sambos or savages,” but not about “the beauty” of Black children.
The girl on The Brownies’ Book cover offers a vastly different vision of Black childhood than the caricatures seen throughout popular culture of the time. She’s confident, excited and talented. The pages that follow feature an assortment of fiction, commentary, history and news for young readers that honors and extols Black identity.
One of the most compelling recurring sections is titled “The Jury,” which features children’s letters to the editor. In the magazine’s first issue, a boy named Franklin writes to ask about “things colored boys can work at when they grow up.” Eleanor wants the editor to recommend “some books on the Negro” so that she “can learn more about [her] race.” And a 15-year-old girl inquires about possible funding sources so that she can attend a boarding school that accepts African-American students.
The Brownies’ Book had a relatively short run — 24 issues from January 1920 to December 1921. But it encouraged a number of other Black newspapers to launch children’s sections in the 1920s. The Pittsburgh Courier, Baltimore’s Afro-American and the Journal and Guide, published in Norfolk, Virginia, each experimented with children’s sections.
By far the most successful effort was that of the
Chicago Defender, which would launch a periodical section for Black youths that ran for decades.
The Chicago Defender was perhaps the most influential Black newspaper of the 20th century. Its readership extended across the United States, and it helped spur the Great Migration, when millions of African Americans left the South, by promoting job opportunities in Northern industrial cities. Roi Ottley, biographer of Defender publisher Robert S. Abbott, wrote that only the Bible was more significant to Black Americans during the first half of the 20th century.
In 1921, the Chicago Defender started publishing a section called the Defender Junior, run by a fictional editor named Bud Billiken.
‘WE ARE LIVING’
Billiken was really a 10-year-old boy named Willard Motley, who later became a noted novelist, though sometimes the paper’s adult editors wrote under Billiken moniker. In his first column, Billiken tells readers he wants to fill “this column with sayings and doings of we little folks,” and implores them to submit poems, questions and opinions.
Black children could find — or at least attempt to find — their voices on the pages of these periodicals. For Bud Billiken, there was no greater urgency. In his introduction to the April 23, 1921, edition, he tells he wrote:
“The world would move on if we were not in it.
This paper would be published just the same without our space. Let us make the world know that we are living and helping to make the noise and dust.”
The Brownies’ Book, the Defender Junior and the children’s sections of other African-American weeklies gave Black children a space to tell their stories, express their anxieties and assert their ambitions.
In that photograph of the ballerina on The Brownie’s Book’s first cover, I imagine her saying something similar to Bud Billiken’s appeal: “Let us make the world know that we are living.”
Or, perhaps, more simply, “Black lives matter.”