San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
At least 82 killed as military seeks to crush protests
YANGON — At least 82 people were killed in one day in a crackdown by Myanmar security forces on prodemocracy protesters, according to reports Saturday from independent media and an organization that keeps track of casualties since the military’s February seizure of power.
Friday’s death toll in Bago was the highest oneday total for a single city since March 14, when just over 100 people were killed in Yangon, the country’s biggest city. Bago is about 60 miles northeast of Yangon.
The death toll of 82 was a preliminary one compiled by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which issues daily counts of casualties and arrests from the crackdown in the aftermath of the Feb. 1 coup that ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Their tallies are widely accepted as highly credible because cases are not added to their totals until they have been confirmed, with the details published on their website.
In its Saturday report, the group said that it expected the number of dead in Bago to rise as more cases were verified.
The online news site Myanmar Now also reported that 82 people had been killed, citing an unnamed source involved with charity rescue work. Myanmar Now and other local media said the bodies had been collected by the military and dumped on the grounds of a Buddhist pagoda.
At least 701 protesters and bystanders have been killed by security forces since the army’s takeover, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.
The attack on Bago was the third in the past week involving the massive use of force to try to crush the persistent opposition to the ruling junta.
Most protests in cities and town around the country are carried out by nonviolent demonstrators who consider themselves part of a civil disobedience movement. But as the police and military escalated the use of lethal force, a hardcore faction of protesters have armed themselves with homemade weapons such as firebombs in the name of selfdefense.
A Saturday report by Myanmar Now said residents of Tamu used hunting rifles Saturday to ambush a military convoy, and claimed to kill three soldiers.
The U.N. special envoy for Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener, arrived Friday in the Thai capital Bangkok on a regional mission to address the crisis in Myanmar. She intends to sound out several Southeast Asian governments for their ideas but has been denied permission to visit Myanmar.