[ad_1]
Security forces in Myanmar shot dead an anti-coup protester on Sunday, when the Australian government confirmed that it is helping two citizens who were detained after trying to leave Yangon.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since soldiers toppled civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi last month, sparking protests across the country demanding a return to democracy.
Security forces have responded with lethal force, using live rounds along with tear gas and rubber bullets in an effort to put a stop to the demonstrations.
A man died on Sunday in the central city of Monywa and at least two people were injured in a clash with security forces at barricades, two witnesses told AFP.
“I saw people carrying a man who was shot and killed,” a local resident told AFP, adding that the body was taken to a local hospital.
“They used stun grenades and tear gas … then they started firing. I don’t know if the man, who died on the spot after he was hit in the head, was killed by rubber bullets or live ammunition.”
– Australians in custody –
Australia’s Foreign Ministry confirmed on Sunday that it was providing consular assistance to two of its citizens in Myanmar.
“Due to our privacy obligations, we will not provide further details,” said a spokeswoman.
Business consultants Matthew O’Kane and Christa Avery, a Canadian-Australian citizen with dual citizenship, are understood to be under house arrest after attempting to leave the country on a relief flight on Friday.
The couple run a bespoke consulting business in Yangon.
A third Australian, economist Sean Turnell, an advisor to Suu Kyi, who was arrested a week after the coup, also remains in detention.
The weekend’s violence failed to deter hundreds of doctors and nurses who donned helmets and brandished Suu Kyi posters as they marched at dawn through Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city and cultural capital.
Later, other protesters put up protest posters in pots along a street.
In the afternoon, barricades were burned, shots fired in the streets and at least four people were injured, a doctor in Mandalay said.
Mandalay has been the scene of some of the worst violence by police and soldiers since the coup.
The protests came a day after a local watchdog group confirmed the killing of four protesters by security forces across the country.
Two of the deaths occurred in Yangon, the country’s commercial center, according to the Association for Assistance for Political Prisoners (AAPP).
– Mother cries ‘hero son’ –
Mourners in the city buried a 26-year-old who died Saturday while in custody after being shot and arrested the night before.
Myo Myint Aung’s mother wept over the coffin at the funeral and said that her son was still a child in her eyes.
“I am very proud of what they did for democracy and this country,” she said, in a video of the funeral service posted on social media.
“You are a true hero.”
A funeral was also held for Mar La Win, a 38-year-old mother of three, who died earlier this weekend in the central city of Pakokku, along the Irrawaddy River.
“My family is broken now,” her husband Myint Swe told AFP as the red flag of Suu Kyi’s political party hung above her coffin surrounded by flowers.
Elsewhere, the heartbroken family of 15-year-old Aung Kaung Htet, who was shot in the forehead during a protest in Tamwe, Yangon, paid tribute to the teenager.
Mourners raised the three-finger salute, a symbol of defiance, at his funeral.
During the night, protesters held a candlelight protest in the northern city of Kale and left posters in the street calling for the United Nations to intervene to stop the violence in Myanmar.
Nearly 250 deaths have been confirmed in the weeks after the coup, the AAPP reported, although the actual number could be higher.
More than 2,300 people have been arrested, the group said.
International condemnation from Washington, Brussels and the United Nations has so far failed to stop the bloodshed.
European Union foreign ministers are expected to approve sanctions against 11 board officials at a meeting on Monday.
bur-bpm / i
