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YANGON: Protesters returned to the streets of Myanmar on Wednesday despite the shooting of a young woman the day before, with some humor to emphasize their peaceful opposition to this month’s military takeover.
Mya Thwate Thwate Khaing, 19, was the first known serious victim of the protests and her hurtful support for the movement seeking to reverse the February 1 coup and free-elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her allies from arrest.
“We cannot remain silent,” youth leader Esther Ze Naw told Reuters. “If blood is spilled during our peaceful protests, there will be more if we let them take over the country.”
There were no reports of violence on Wednesday and in many places the protests took on a festive air, with bare-chested bodybuilders, women in ball gowns and wedding dresses, farmers on tractors and people with their pets. Some set up a protest line in inflatable rubber tubs.
Thousands of people joined the demonstrations in the main city of Yangon, while in the capital, Naypyitaw, hundreds of government workers marched in support of a growing campaign of civil disobedience.
A group of policemen from the state of Kayah, in the east, marched in uniform with a sign that read “We do not want a dictatorship,” according to images published in the media.
Earlier, soldiers took over a clinic that had been treating injured protesters in Naypyitaw on Tuesday, a doctor said.
The teenager was shot when the police fired, mainly into the air, to clear the protesters. Her brother, Ye Htut Aung, told Reuters that the family, while supporting the protests, had urged her not to go, but she insisted.
The army’s True News Information Unit said in a statement that security forces only used non-lethal weapons and that police were investigating. He said that two policemen had been injured by the “rioters” and were in the hospital.
Protesters covered a large portrait of Mya Thwate Thwate Khaing from a bridge in Yangon. A doctor at the hospital where she was being treated told Reuters she was not likely to survive.
Human Rights Watch said a 20-year-old man also wounded by a bullet was in stable condition, while doctors said three other people were being treated for injuries caused by suspected rubber bullets.
Protesters were also injured in Mandalay and other cities, where security forces used water cannons and arrested dozens. State television said four policemen were also injured by protesters throwing stones.
Disproportionate strength
The protests are the largest in Myanmar in more than a decade, reliving memories of nearly half a century of direct military rule and spasms of bloody uprisings until the military began to relinquish some power in 2011.
The military, who have imposed meeting restrictions and a night curfew in the largest cities, justified their inauguration by fraud in the November 8 elections that Suu Kyi’s NLD party won by an overwhelming majority. The electoral commission dismissed the army’s complaints.
Western countries have condemned the coup but have taken few concrete actions to push for the restoration of democracy.
The US State Department said it was reviewing aid to Myanmar to ensure that those responsible for the coup faced “significant consequences.”
UN human rights researcher Thomas Andrews expressed concern about the use of deadly force.
“Myanmar military and police personnel must know that ‘obeying orders’ is not a defense to commit atrocities and that any such defense will fail regardless of their place in the chain of command,” he said.
He said there had been “hundreds of arbitrary arrests” since the coup.
The UN’s main human rights body is scheduled to consider a resolution on Friday that would condemn the coup in Myanmar and demand urgent access, according to a text.
Avinash Paliwal, a professor at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, said Myanmar would not be as isolated now as it was in the past, and that China, India, Southeast Asian neighbors and Japan are unlikely to cut the ties.
“The country is too geostrategically important for that to happen. The United States and other Western countries will impose sanctions, but this coup and its ramifications will be an Asian story, not a Western one, ”Paliwal said.
Underlining that Asian stance, the Prime Minister of neighboring Thailand, Prayuth Chan-ocha, himself a former army chief who took power in a coup in 2014, said he had received a letter from the new leader of Myanmar’s junta. , Army Chief Min Aung Hlaing, requesting to help support democracy.
“Thailand supports the democratic process. The rest is up to him to see how to proceed, ”said Prayuth.
Suu Kyi, 75, won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for campaigning for democracy and remains very popular at home despite damage to her international reputation by the plight of the Rohingya Muslim minority.
She has spent nearly 15 years under house arrest and is now facing charges of illegally importing six walkie-talkies, and her attorney said he was not allowed to see her.
