Mon, Apr 12, 2021 page1

• Myanmar’s post-coup civilian death toll tops 700

  • AFP, YANGON, Myanmar
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  A security guard was wounded in a bomb blast outside a military-owned bank in Myanmar’s second-biggest city yesterday morning, as the civilian death toll from the junta’s brutal crackdown on dissent topped more than 700 at the weekend.

  The country has been in turmoil since the military removed Burmese State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb. 1.

  Myawaddy Bank’s biggest branch in Mandalay was targeted yesterday morning and a security guard was injured in the explosion, local media reported.

  

  A demonstrator carrying a homemade weapon gives the three-finger salute at an anti-coup protest in Mandalay, Myanmar, yesterday.

  Photo: EPA-EFE

  The bank is one of scores of military-controlled businesses that have faced boycott pressure since the coup, with many customers demanding to withdraw their savings.

  There has been heavy bloodletting in the past few days.

  On Saturday, a local monitoring group said security forces gunned down and killed 82 anti-coup protesters the previous day in the city of Bago, 65km northeast of Yangon.

  The UN office in Myanmar late on Saturday wrote on Twitter that it was following the bloodshed in Bago, where it said medical treatment had been denied to the injured.

  Overall, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners has verified 701 civilian deaths since the putsch.

  The junta has a far lower number: 248, a spokesman said on Friday.

  Despite the bloodshed, protesters continued to rally in parts of the country.

  University students and their professors marched through the streets of Mandalay and the city of Meiktila yesterday morning, according to local media.

  Some carried stems of Eugenia flowers — a symbol of victory.

  In Yangon, protesters carried a banner that read: “We will get victory, we will win.”

  Protesters there, as well as in the city of Monywa, took to writing political messages on leaves, including “We must win,” and calling for UN intervention to prevent further bloodshed.

  Across the country people have been urged to participate in a torchlight protest in their neighborhoods after sunset last night.

  Unrest also erupted on Saturday in the northwestern town of Tamu, near the Indian border, where protesters fought back when soldiers tried to tear down makeshift barricades erected to block security forces.

  Two civilians were killed when soldiers started randomly shooting, a local resident said, with protesters retaliating by throwing a bomb that exploded and overturned a military truck, killing more than a dozen soldiers.

  “Some are in hiding — we are worried that our people will be hurt as a reprisal,” the resident told reporters.

  The mounting bloodshed has also angered some of Myanmar’s 20 or so armed ethnic groups, who control swathes of territory mostly in border regions.

  There were clashes on Saturday in northern Shan State, as the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), an ethnic rebel group, mounted a pre-dawn attack on a police station, said TNLA Brigadier General Tar Bhone Kyaw, who declined to give details.

  Local media reported that more than a dozen police officers were killed, while the TNLA said the Burmese military retaliated with airstrikes on its troops, killing at least one rebel soldier.

  State-run television reported in the evening that “terrorist armed groups” attacked the police station with heavy weaponry and set it on fire.

  Meanwhile, state media reported on Friday that 19 people had been sentenced to death for robbery and murder by a military court, with 17 of them tried in absentia.

  They were arrested in Yangon’s North Okkalapa township — one of six areas in the city under martial law, meaning anybody arrested there is tried by a military tribunal.

  Myanmar has long had the death penalty, but has not carried out an execution in more than 30 years, Human Rights Watch Asia division deputy director Phil Robertson said.

  “It indicates the military are prepared to go back to a time when Myanmar was executing people,” he said.
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