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YANGON: Roads leading out of Myanmar’s largest city were clogged on Friday (March 19) with people fleeing the junta’s deadly crackdown on anti-coup dissent, while authorities in neighboring Thailand said they were preparing for an influx of refugees.
Myanmar has been in crisis since the army toppled civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1, sparking a massive uprising that security forces have tried to crush with a campaign of violence and fear.
At least nine more protesters were killed on Friday, a funeral service provider and media outlets said, bringing the confirmed death toll across the country since the coup to more than 230.
An Aungban funeral service official, who declined to be named, told Reuters that eight people died, seven at the scene and one injured person who died after being taken to hospital in the nearby city of Kalaw.
The board’s spokesman was not immediately available for comment, but has previously said that security forces have used force only when necessary. Critics have scoffed at that explanation.
A protester was killed in the northeastern city of Loikaw, the Myanmar Now news portal said, and there were some shootings in the main city of Yangon, but the victims were not reported.
The total death toll in weeks of unrest has risen to at least 233, according to the latest report and a tally by the activist group Association of Assistance for Political Prisoners.
The junta also imposed martial law this week in six municipalities in Yangon, the nation’s former capital and commercial center, putting nearly 2 million people under the direct control of military commanders.
Some of those areas have been turned into battle zones, with protesters firing slingshots and dropping gasoline bombs at security forces who have fired actual rounds.
Smoke has also risen over nearly deserted streets, with security forces burning barricades made from vehicle tires and fences that have been erected by protesters.
LEE: Thailand prepares as refugees from the Myanmar coup flee to border regions
On Friday, local media showed traffic jamming on a main highway heading north from Yangon, reporting that people were fleeing the city into rural areas.
AFP also spoke with residents who had already fled or were preparing to leave.
“I no longer feel safe and protected, some nights I can’t sleep,” a resident near one of the districts where security forces killed protesters this week told AFP.
“I’m very worried that the worst will happen next because where I live … it’s very intense, with the security forces pulling people off the streets.”
More than 230 people have died in the junta’s crackdown on protesters. (Photo: AFP / STR)
The woman said she had bought bus tickets to her home state in western Myanmar and would be leaving in a couple of days.
One resident told AFP that he feared being shot by security forces, who had been threatening people if they did not clear the barricades.
“We are like house rats looking for something to eat in someone else’s kitchen,” said one man who described fear of leaving his home this week to fetch milk for his two children.
Several city residents told AFP that soldiers and police were forcing them at gunpoint to remove the barricades that protected their neighborhoods.
READ: Yangon residents flee martial law area as Myanmar death toll rises
A 29-year-old man who works as a goldsmith in Yangon told AFP by phone that he had left the city.
“It was too distressing to stay,” he told AFP. “After coming home here, I feel much more relieved and confident.”
Mobile data in Myanmar has also declined since Monday, plunging those without Wi-Fi settings into a data blackout.
READ: Overthrown Myanmar lawmakers contemplate investigation of crimes against humanity at International Criminal Court
PREPARING FOR REFUGEES
Across the Myanmar border in Thailand’s Tak province, authorities said they were preparing shelters for an influx of potential refugees.
“If many people from Myanmar cross the border due to an urgent case, we have prepared the measures … to receive them,” said Provincial Governor Pongrat Piromrat.
He said that Tak province could support between 30,000 and 50,000 people, although he confirmed that no one appears to have crossed the border yet.
About 90,000 refugees from Myanmar already live along the porous border, fleeing decades of civil war between the army and armed ethnic groups.
READ: Indonesian President calls for high-level ASEAN meeting on Myanmar crisis
LEE: Myanmar faces increasing isolation as the army tightens
The junta has repeatedly justified the seizure of power by alleging widespread electoral fraud in the November elections, which Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party had overwhelmed.
According to an NLD deputy, the party’s information officer Kyi Toe, who had regularly posted updates on the Nobel laureate’s health and whereabouts, was arrested Thursday night in Yangon.
Many of the ousted MPs are in hiding and have formed a group called the Representative Committee of Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH), the Burmese word for “parliament.”
This week, the CRPH envoy to the UN, who calls himself Dr. Sasa, and his vice president, Mahn Win Khaing Than, were charged with “high treason.”
