The US yesterday ordered the departure of nonessential diplomats from Myanmar amid growing violence following a military coup that ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Daily protests demanding the restoration of the elected government have been met with a military crackdown that has left more than 520 civilians dead in the weeks since the coup on Feb. 1.
The junta’s violent response has triggered international condemnation and threats of retaliation from some of Myanmar’s myriad ethnic armed groups.
Photo: AP
The US Department of State said that it was ordering the departure of “non-emergency US government employees and their family members.”
The decision was taken to protect the safety and security of staff and their families, the department said.
World powers have repeatedly condemned the violent crackdown on dissent and hit top junta cadres with sanctions.
However, the pressure has not swayed the generals.
Armed Forces Day on Saturday last week saw the biggest loss of life so far, with at least 107 people killed.
The spiraling bloodshed has angered some of Myanmar’s 20 or so armed ethnic groups, who control large areas of territory mostly in border regions.
Three of them — the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, the Myanmar Nationalities Democratic Alliance Army and the Arakan Army — on Tuesday threatened to join protesters’ fight unless the military reined in its crackdown.
While the three groups are yet to act on their warning, two other outfits — the Karen National Union (KNU) and the Kachin Independence Army — have stepped up attacks on military and police in the past few days.
On Tuesday, a police station in Bago was reportedly hit with a rocket attack that injured five officers, although it was not clear who was responsible.
The KNU, one of the biggest rebel groups, took over an army base in eastern Kayin State at the weekend, prompting the military to respond with airstrikes.
Further strikes were launched on Tuesday, but Padoh Saw Taw Nee, the KNU’s head of foreign affairs, said that the group would continue its position of “strongly supporting people’s movement against [the] military coup.”
The KNU’s Fifth Brigade put out a statement on Tuesday condemning the airstrikes and warning that it had no option but to “confront these serious threats” posed by the military.
About 3,000 people fled through the jungle to seek safety across the border in Thailand after the weekend strikes.
The Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs late on Tuesday said that about 2,300 people had returned to Myanmar, while about 550 remained in Thailand.
Some Karen have accused the Thai authorities of pushing people back and blocking UN refugee officials from the area.
Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said that there was “no influx” of refugees, and that the kingdom’s authorities had not “scared them off with guns or sticks.”
Some Karen people injured in the weekend strikes sought medical treatment on the Thai side of the border — the most serious case was a 15-year-old with a collapsed lung and broken rib.
Thai police said they had intercepted 10 parcels containing 112 grenades and 6,000 rounds of ammunition in Chiang Rai Province that had been destined for Tachileik, a border town in Myanmar.
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees