Burmese democracy advocates yesterday launched protests calling for the release of prisoners detained by Myanmar’s military government, as the junta declared a national unity government formed by its opponents illegal.
The Southeast Asian country has been in crisis since the military on Feb. 1 seized power from Burmese State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government, with almost daily protests against the coup occurring despite a brutal crackdown by the junta on dissent.
The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said that 738 people have been killed by security forces since the coup and 3,300 people are in detention, including 20 who have been sentenced to death.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Please raise your voice and demand the release of all the people who are being unfairly detained under the junta government,” protest leader Ei Thinzar Maung wrote on Facebook.
People yesterday shared photos on social media wearing blue shirts and holding up a hand with the name of an arrested person written on it.
The shirts are a tribute to democracy advocate Win Tin, who was imprisoned by the military for 19 years and died on April 21, 2014.
After his release, he pledged to wear a blue shirt until all political prisoners were freed.
The junta has since the coup released thousands of people from jail, but relatively few who have been linked to the protests.
Meanwhile, military-backed TV channel Myawaddy TV on Tuesday reported that the Burmese Ministry of Home Affairs had declared unlawful a national unity government formed by opponents of the junta.
Pro-democracy politicians including ousted lawmakers on Friday last week announced the formation of the new administration that nominally includes Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been in detention since the coup, as well as leaders of the protests and ethnic minorities.
The national unity government says it is the legitimate authority, and has requested international recognition and an invitation to an ASEAN meeting in Jakarta on Saturday to discuss the crisis in Myanmar.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) in a statement said that the bloc, which includes Myanmar, should immediately withdraw an invitation to Burmese Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the leader of the coup.
“Min Aung Hlaing, who faces international sanctions for his role in military atrocities and the brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, should not be welcomed at an intergovernmental gathering to address a crisis he created,” HRW Asia director Brad Adams said.
ASEAN has been trying to guide Myanmar out of the bloody turmoil triggered by the coup, but the group’s principles of consensus and noninterference have restricted its ability to overcome members’ divergent views on how to respond to the military killing of hundreds of civilians.
Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah, who is also the country’s prime minister, is to chair Saturday’s meeting, his office said in a statement.
The military has shown little willingness to engage with its neighbors and no sign of wanting to talk to members of the government it ousted, accusing some of them of treason, which is punishable by death.
UN Special Envoy to Myanmar Christine Schraner Burgener has communicated with the military since the coup, but the junta has not allowed her to visit.
Malaysian Minister of Foreign Affairs Hishammuddin Hussein said that the country’s prime minister would attend the meeting.
“We hope that with the coming discussions in Jakarta, Myanmar will agree to accept representatives from the ASEAN chair Brunei or the ASEAN secretariat in Jakarta to observe and help Myanmar return to normalcy,” he told reporters.
However, Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said that he would be represented by his deputy, Thai Minister of Foreign Affairs Don Pramudwinai.
Thai and Malaysian officials have said that Min Aung Hlaing would go to Jakarta, although the Burmese government has not commented.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of