Burmese security forces yesterday surrounded the staff compound of striking railway workers opposed to the military junta as ousted lawmakers appointed an acting vice president to take over the duties of detained politicians.
In New York, the UN Security Council failed to agree on a statement that would have condemned the coup in Myanmar, called for restraint by the military and threatened to consider “further measures.”
Talks on the statement would likely continue, diplomats said, after China, Russia, India and Vietnam all suggested amendments late on Tuesday to a British draft, including removal of the reference to a coup and the threat to consider further action.
Photo: AP
The railway staff in Yangon are part of a civil disobedience movement that has crippled government business, and included strikes at banks, factories and shops since the army ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in a coup on Feb. 1.
Security forces have cracked down with increasing force on daily, nationwide protests, leaving the Southeast Asian nation in turmoil.
More than 60 protesters have been killed and 1,900 people have been arrested since the coup, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an advocacy group, has said.
Footage posted on social media showed security forces near the railway staff compound.
One person involved in the strike said by telephone that they feared an imminent crackdown.
“I think they are going to arrest us. Please help us,” said the person, who asked to be identified only as Ma Su rather than their full name.
In a Facebook live broadcast from the area, people chanted: “Are we staff united? Yes, we are united,” while a commentator said that police were trying to remove barricades and threatening to shoot.
Details could not be independently verified.
Police and army officials did not respond to requests for comment.
In Myanmar’s second city, Mandalay, protesters staged a sit-in protest, chanting: “The resolution must prevail.”
On Tuesday, Zaw Myat Linn, an official from Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), died in custody after he was arrested, the second party figure to die in detention in two days.
“He’s been participating continuously in the protests,” said Ba Myo Thein, a member of the dissolved upper house of parliament.
The cause of death was not clear.
In a Facebook live broadcast before he was detained, Zaw Myat Linn urged people to continue fighting the army, “even if it costs our lives.”
In a symbolic gesture, an announcement posted on the NLD’s Facebook page on Tuesday said that ousted lawmakers had appointed Mahn Win Khaing Than, who was the upper house speaker, as acting vice president to perform the duties of arrested Burmese President Win Myint and leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Mahn Win Khaing Than’s whereabouts were not known.
Police on Tuesday also cracked down on independent media, raiding the offices of two news firms and detaining two journalists.
At least 35 journalists have been arrested since the coup, of which 19 have been released, the Myanmar Now news agency reported.
Some police have refused orders to fire on unarmed protesters and have fled to neighboring India, according to an interview with one officer and classified Indian police documents.
“As the civil disobedience movement is gaining momentum and protest[s] held by anti-coup protesters at different places, we are instructed to shoot at the protesters,” four officers said in a joint statement to police in the Indian city of Mizoram.
“In such a scenario, we don’t have the guts to shoot at our own people who are peaceful demonstrators,” they said.
The US is “repulsed” by the Burmese army’s continued use of lethal force against its people and is continuing to urge the military to exercise “maximum restraint,” US Department of State spokesman Ned Price said on Tuesday.
The army has justified the coup by saying that an election won by the NLD in November last year was marred by fraud — a claim rejected by the electoral commission.
It has promised a new election, but has not said when that might be held.
The junta has hired a lobbyist, Israeli-Canadian Ari Ben-Menashe, for US$2 million to “assist in explaining the real situation” of the army’s coup to the US and other countries, documents filed with the US Department of Justice showed.
Ben-Menashe and his firm, Dickens & Madson Canada, are to represent Myanmar’s military government in Washington, as well as lobby Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Israel and Russia, and international bodies such as the UN, a consultancy agreement said.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
SECRETIVE SECT: Tetsuya Yamagami was said to have held a grudge against the Unification Church for bankrupting his family after his mother donated about ￥100m The gunman accused of killing former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe yesterday pleaded guilty, three years after the assassination in broad daylight shocked the world. The slaying forced a reckoning in a nation with little experience of gun violence, and ignited scrutiny of alleged ties between prominent conservative lawmakers and a secretive sect, the Unification Church. “Everything is true,” Tetsuya Yamagami said at a court in the western city of Nara, admitting to murdering the nation’s longest-serving leader in July 2022. The 45-year-old was led into the room by four security officials. When the judge asked him to state his name, Yamagami, who
RSS