A bomb blast at a rural Myanmar election commission office has stirred fears of violence during the first polls in two decades next month in the military-run country, state media reported yesterday.
A device made from TNT exploded late on Wednesday at a government office in Bago -Township, about 80km north of the biggest city, Yangon, but no casualties were reported and staff had closed the office 45 minutes earlier.
Union Election Commission officials were using the office to coordinate the local ballot. State newspapers, which are mouthpieces of a junta that has ruled for the past 48 years, said the bombing was an attempt to derail the Nov. 7 polls.
“They are trying to ramp up instigations and destructive acts with intent to disrupt the upcoming democracy elections,” yesterday’s state newspapers said.
The media blamed “insurgents, destructive elements and political opportunists” for the bombing.
Critics of Myanmar’s army -rulers have dismissed the election as a sham to create a military-dominated system run by generals and their proxies with little change to the status quo.
The military has a 25 percent quota of all legislative seats and scores of generals have retired from the army to run in the polls. Several parties are serving as proxies for the regime and most of the junta’s opposition is hamstrung by strict rules.
A Myanmar court this week sentenced 12 people to prison terms between five and 23 years for bomb plots and another court handed down a 15-year term to a Buddhist monk for attempting to disrupt the elections, their lawyers said on Thursday.
The blast in Bago followed the death of two men shot dead in the same township by soldiers earlier last month. The regime cast the discovery of an unexploded C-4 bomb in a Yangon suburb a week later as retaliation for the killings.
In a separate development, six students from Dagon University and Hmawbi Technical Institutes in Yangon have been arrested for distributing leaflets with anti-election slogans, university sources said.
The junta takes a zero-tolerance approach to dissent and rights groups say 2,200 people are now in prison for expressing their political views.
Myanmar has given no indication it will bow to Western pressure to release detainees before the election.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not