Myanmar protests go on despite military attacks
YANGON, Myanmar — Police in Myanmar’s biggest city fired tear gas Monday at defiant crowds who returned to the streets to protest last month’s coup, despite reports that security forces had killed at least 18 people a day earlier.
The protesters in Yangon were chased as they tried to gather at their usual meeting spot at the Hledan Center intersection. Demonstrators scattered and sought in vain to rinse the irritating gas from their eyes, but they 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 instead she was detained along with President Win Myint and other senior officials.
The army has leveled several charges against Ms. 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. On Monday, Ms. Suu Kyi made a court appearance via videoconference and was charged with two more offenses, lawyer Khin Maung Zaw told reporters.
Accused of inciting unrest, Ms. Suu Kyi was charged under a law that dates from British colonial days and has long been criticized as a vaguely defined catch-all statute that inhibits freedom of expression. That charge carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison. The other charge from Monday carries a oneyear sentence.
Following her detention on the day of the coup, the 75year-old Ms. 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, a movement of protests in cities across the country has 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 more 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 over 20.
Any of the reports would make it easily the highest single-day death toll since the military takeover. The junta has also made mass arrests, and the independent Assistance Association for Political Prisoners reported that as many as 1,000 people were detained Sunday. Several journalists have been among those detained, including one for The Associated Press.
At least five people are believed to have been killed Sunday in Yangon when police shot at protesters, who have remained nonviolent despite provocation from the security forces and pro-military counterdemonstrators.
People erected makeshift sidewalk shrines Monday at the spots where several of the victims were shot and also paid their respects by standing outside the hospitals where the bodies were being released to families.
In Dawei, a small city in southeastern Myanmar where five people were reported killed Sunday, the number of protesters on the streets Monday was lower than usual, but they paraded to the applause of bystanders.
Confirming the deaths of protesters has been difficult in areas outside Yangon, Mandalay and Naypyitaw. But in many cases, there was evidence posted online, including videos of shootings, photos of bullet casings collected afterward and gruesome pictures of bodies.
In a statement published Monday in the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper, Myanmar’s Foreign Ministry declared that the junta “is exercising utmost restraint to avoid the use of force in managing the violent protests systematically, in accordance with domestic and international laws in order to keep minimum casualties.”
But U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the use of lethal force against peaceful protesters and arbitrary arrests “unacceptable,” said U. N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
“Words of condemnation are necessary and welcome but insufficient. The world must act. We must all act,” the U.N.’s independent expert on human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, said in a separate statement.