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YANGON: Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Myanmar on Sunday (March 7) to demonstrate against last month’s coup despite nightly raids by security forces in the main city of Yangon to crack down on leaders of the protest.
The biggest protest was in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second largest city, local media said. Protests also took place in Yangon, in Kale, near the Indian border, and in Dawei, a coastal city in the south. There were no reports of violence.
The Southeast Asian country has been in turmoil since the military overthrew and detained elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1. Daily demonstrations and strikes have stifled business and paralyzed the administration, and the United Nations says security forces have killed more than 50 people.
In the early hours of Sunday, residents said soldiers and police moved to various districts of Yangon, firing shots. At least three were arrested in Kyauktada Township, residents said. They did not know the reason for the arrests.
“They are asking to take out my father and my brother. No one is going to help us? Don’t even touch my father and my brother. Take us too if you want to take them away,” a woman yelled while two of them. an actor and his son were taken away.
LEE: Body of ‘Everything will be fine’ protester exhumed in Myanmar
Soldiers also came looking for a lawyer working for Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), but could not find him, a now-dissolved member of parliament, Sithu Maung, said in a Facebook post.
Reuters was unable to reach police for comment. A spokesperson for the board did not respond to calls seeking comment.
“HIT AND KICKED”
More than 1,700 people have been arrested under the board, according to the advocacy group the Association for Assistance for Political Prisoners (AAPP). He did not give a figure for overnight arrests.
“The detainees were beaten and kicked with military boots, beaten with police batons and then dragged into police vehicles,” the AAPP said in a statement. “The security forces entered residential areas and tried to arrest more protesters and fired at houses, destroying many.”
Myanmar authorities said on Saturday they had exhumed the body of 19-year-old Kyal Sin, who has become an icon of the protest movement after she was shot and killed in Mandalay city on Wednesday wearing a T-shirt that read “Everything will make it okay.”
State-run MRTV said a surgical investigation showed police could not have killed her because the wrong type of projectile was found in her head and she had been shot from behind, while police were in front.
Photographs of the day showed that her head was not looking at the security forces moments before they killed her. Opponents of the coup accused the authorities of attempted cover-up.
READ: Protests and tear gas in Myanmar a day after UN envoy urged action
LEE: Myanmar asks India to return eight policemen who fled across the border
The killings have drawn ire in the West and have also been condemned by most democracies in Asia. The United States and some other Western countries have imposed limited sanctions on the junta. Meanwhile, China has said that the priority should be stability and that other countries should not interfere.
The protesters are demanding the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and respect for the November elections, which her party overwhelmingly won, but which the army rejected. The army has said it will hold democratic elections on an unspecified date.
Israeli-Canadian lobbyist Ari Ben-Menashe, hired by the Myanmar junta, told Reuters the generals are eager to leave politics and seek to improve relations with the United States and distance themselves from China.
He said that Aung San Suu Kyi had gotten too close to China for the generals’ liking.
“There is a real push to move towards the West and the United States rather than trying to get closer to the Chinese,” Ben-Menashe said. “They want to get out of politics entirely … but it’s a process.”
READ: Dozens of Myanmar citizens waiting to enter India – Officials
Ben-Menashe said he had also been tasked with seeking Arab support for a repatriation plan for Rohingya refugees, hundreds of thousands of whom were expelled from Myanmar in 2017 in an army crackdown after rebel attacks.
The junta leader and army chief, Min Aung Hlaing, had been under Western sanctions even before the coup for his role in the operation, which UN investigators said was carried out with “genocidal intent.”
