At Least 26 Protesters Killed Across Myanmar as Security Forces Continue Bloody Crackdowns
TL-02(WMA-301) tanks of Myanmar Army. Photo: TTL(Facebook). CC0 1.0.
At least 26 protesters were killed by police and military forces across Myanmar on Wednesday, witnesses said, on the second bloodiest day in more than a month after a military coup deposed the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
At least 13 people died in Yangon’s North Okkalapa township, six people in Monywa, and two in Mandalay, city residents and witnesses said. Video footage from citizen journalists and CCTV cameras provided to RFA showed police brutally beating civilians in several areas.
More than 50 people have been killed due to the violent and arbitrary crackdowns in Myanmar since the Feb. 1 coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), a watchdog group.
Across the country, many protesters and bystanders suffered injuries from live ammunition, tear gas, and beatings by security forces in broad daylight during crackdowns on anti-junta demonstrators in heavily populated cities throughout Myanmar.
Several protests were staged in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, where t least 13 people died in a brutal crackdown on demonstrators in suburban North Okkalapa township, residents said. Five demonstrators were injured in the township.
Five protesters were hit by rubber bullets, and five others were arrested during a protest in Yangon’s Sangyaung township, witnesses said.
Policemen broke the windows of some cars parked on roads and arrested not only protesters, but also those who were providing first-aid treatment to the wounded, they said.
Police and soldiers set fire to tires across the road from the protest site and viciously beat four volunteers from an elder care charity vehicle with blows to the head from their guns, the AAPP said it in daily report on anti-coup protests, arrests and deaths. One of the men died due to serious injuries.
“The military and so-called police are making an enemy of the peaceful protestors, terrorizing and directing their guns towards peoples face, chest, head, back and abdomen,” the AAPP said.
“The armed personnel directed random shots towards the crowd of peaceful protests in an intentional manner,” the group said. “They dragged dead bodies and forcibly detained injured people, neglecting any medical care, violently beating and arresting people, shooting randomly into people’s houses with no reason, looting and [burning] public property.”
Full story: rfa.org
Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
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