Burmese security forces yesterday arrested Paing Takhon, a model and actor who had spoken out against a military coup, his sister told reporters, as people placed shoes filled with flowers in parts of Yangon to commemorate dead protesters.
Troops on Wednesday opened fire on protesters, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens, protesters and media said.
Nearly 600 civilians have been killed by security forces since the junta in February seized power from the elected government of Aung San Su Kyi, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said on Wednesday.
Photo: AFP / ANONYMOUS SOURCE
The advocacy group said that 2,847 were being held in detention.
A spokesman for the junta could not be reached for comment.
Arrest warrants have been issued for hundreds of people, with the junta this week going after scores of influencers, entertainers, artists and musicians.
Paing Takhon, 24, a model and actor, is among several celebrities detained in the country.
He had condemned the military’s takeover and pledged support for Aung San Su Kyi.
His sister, Thi Thi Lwin, told reporters that the military detained him at 4:30am at their parents’ home in Yangon, where he had been staying for several days while unwell.
The security forces came with eight military trucks and about 50 soldiers, and it was unclear where he had been taken, she said
Paing Takhon had been sick with malaria and a heart condition, his sister said.
A comedian named Zarganar was arrested on Tuesday, media reported.
Meanwhile, Burmese Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, leader of the coup, said in a statement on Wednesday that the civil disobedience movement, or CDM, had halted the working of hospitals, schools, roads, offices and factories.
“CDM is an activity to destroy the country,” he said.
Fitch Solutions said in a report that Western sanctions targeting the military were unlikely to succeed in restoring democracy, but the army was losing control.
It predicted a violent revolution pitting the military against an armed opposition comprised of members of the anti-coup movement and ethnic militias.
“The escalating violence on civilians and ethnic militias show that the Tatmadaw [military] is increasingly losing control of the country,” Fitch Solutions said.
The vast majority of people back the ousted government, it said.
Aung San Su Kyi and leading figures in her National League for Democracy party, which won an election in November last year that was annulled by the coup, are in detention.
UN Special Envoy to Myanmar Christine Schraner Burgener hopes to visit the country in the next few days, a UN spokesman said in New York.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese