Protesters fight back amid harsh junta crackdown
YANGON, Myanmar — Protesters in Myanmar fired slingshots and threw Molotov cocktails toward lines of security forces after apparently coming under fire Wednesday in a rare incidence of anticoup demonstrators fighting back against a relentlessly violent crackdown.
The growing resistance comes after one organization said that more than 200 people have been killed since the Feb. 1 takeover.
At least two people were shot dead during protests Wednesday in Kalay in northwestern Myanmar, according to press and social media posts that included photos of the victims.
Smoke and fires were seen in Kalay and Yangon on Wednesday night, reportedly from the authorities burning down barricades protesters had set up during the day.
Protests against the coup that ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi have shown remarkable staying power and largely remained peaceful, despite curbs on internet access, the imposition of martial law in some places, and an extraordinarily violent response by police.
Demonstrators have come up with innovative ways to carry on in the face of the violence, including lining up placards as standins for themselves or coconuts painted with the words “Spring Revolution.”
But on Wednesday, after security forces apparently shot at them in the country’s largest city of Yangon, demonstrators initially fled — but then crept back to hunker down behind sandbag barricades. Some hurled firebombs, while others took aim with slingshots — though the forces were too far away to be hit.
Pope Francis appealed for an end to the bloodshed on Wednesday.
In an apparent reference to widely broadcast images of a nun in Myanmar, kneeling in the street in front of armed security forces, Francis said: “I, too, kneel on the streets of Myanmar and say: May violence cease.”
Protesters last week in response to increased police violence began taking a more aggressive approach to selfdefense — burning tires at barricades and pushing back when they could against attacks.
A statement issued Sunday by the Committee Representing Pyihtaungsu Hluttaw — an organization of the elected members of Parliament whom the military barred from taking their seats but who have set themselves up as an alternative government to the junta — announced that the general public has the legal right to selfdefense against the security forces. The committee was earlier called a treasonous organization by the junta, which declared it illegal.
State television MRTV announced Tuesday that the committee’s appointee as a special envoy to the United Nations has been charged with high treason, which carries a death sentence.