Almost 40 dead in violent day of protests against Myanmar coup, says UN envoy

Thirty-eight people were killed in Myanmar when the army quelled protests in several towns and cities on Wednesday, the United Nations said, the most violent day since the first demonstrations against the military coup broke out last month.

Police and soldiers opened fire with live bullets without warning, witnesses said.

The bloodshed came a day after neighboring countries called for restraint following the military’s overthrow of the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

“It is horrible, it is a massacre. There are no words to describe the situation and our feelings, ”youth activist Thinzar Shunlei Yi told Reuters via a messaging app.

Among the dead were four children, an aid agency said. Hundreds of protesters were arrested, local media reported.

“Today was the bloodiest day since the coup occurred on February 1. We had today, just today, 38 people died. We now have more than 50 people dead since the coup started, and many are injured, ”said United Nations Special Envoy for Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener, in New York.

A spokesman for the ruling military council did not respond to phone calls seeking comment.

Schraner Burgener said that in conversations with Myanmar’s deputy military chief Soe Win, she had warned him that the military was likely to face heavy measures from some countries and isolation in retaliation for the coup.

“The response was, ‘We are used to sanctions and we survive,'” he told reporters in New York. “When I also warned them that they would isolate themselves, the response was: ‘We have to learn to walk with few friends.’

The UN Security Council will discuss the situation Friday in a closed-door meeting, diplomats said.

SUSTAINED SHOOTING

Ko Bo Kyi, deputy secretary of the rights group of the Myanmar Political Prisoners Assistance Association, had previously said that the military killed at least 18. But the figure rose at the end of the day.

In the main city of Yangon, witnesses said at least eight people were killed, seven of them when security forces opened sustained fire in a neighborhood in the north of the city early in the evening.

“I heard many continuous shots. I lay down on the ground, they shot a lot, ”protester Kaung Pyae Sone Tun, 23, told Reuters.

In Washington, US State Department spokesman Ned Price said the United States was “shocked” by the increase in violence. The administration of President Joe Biden was evaluating “appropriate” measures to respond and any action would be directed against the Myanmar military, he added.

The United States has conveyed to China that it is seeking Beijing to play a constructive role in Myanmar, the spokesman said.

The European Union said that the shooting at unarmed civilians and medical workers constituted a clear violation of international law. He also said that the military was intensifying its crackdown on the media, with a growing number of journalists arrested and charged.

In the central town of Monywa, six people were killed, the Monywa Gazette reported. Others died in Mandalay’s second largest city, the northern city of Hpakant and the central city of Myingyan.

Save the Children said in a statement that four children were among the dead, including a 14-year-old boy who Radio Free Asia reported was shot dead by a soldier in a passing military truck convoy. The soldiers loaded his body into a truck and left the scene, according to the report.

‘OVERCOME’

The security forces that broke up the protests in Yangon detained about 300 protesters, the Myanmar Now news agency reported.

Video posted on social media showed lines of young men, hands on their heads, getting into army trucks as police and soldiers stood guard. Reuters could not verify the images.

Images of a 19-year-old woman, one of two shot dead in Mandalay, showed her wearing a T-shirt that read “Everything will be fine.”

Yangon police ordered three medics to get out of an ambulance, shot at the windshield, and then kicked and beat the workers with butts and batons, a video broadcast by US-funded Radio Free Asia showed. Reuters was unable to independently verify the video.

Democracy activist Esther Ze Naw told Reuters that the sacrifices of those who died would not be in vain.

“We are going to get through this and win,” he said.

On Tuesday, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) failed to make a breakthrough in a virtual meeting of foreign ministers on Myanmar.

Although united in a call for restraint, only four members – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore – called for the release of Suu Kyi and other detainees.

“We express ASEAN’s readiness to assist Myanmar in a positive, peaceful and constructive way,” ASEAN President Brunei said in a statement.

Myanmar’s state media said that the army-appointed Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin attended and “informed the meeting of voting irregularities” in the November elections.

The military justified the coup by saying that their complaints of electoral fraud in the November 8 vote were ignored. Suu Kyi’s party won overwhelmingly, obtaining a second term.

The electoral commission said the vote was fair.

The leader of the board, Major General Min Aung Hlaing, has promised to hold new elections, but has not given a deadline. UN envoy Schraner Burgener said his deputy, Soe Win, told him that “after a year they want to have another election.”

Suu Kyi, 75, has been held incommunicado since the coup, but appeared at a court hearing by video conference this week and looked in good health, a lawyer said.

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