Inclusion of minorities can strengthen the movement

The Daily Star
Opinion A Closer Look

Tasneem Tayeb
March 04, 2021

Tear gas and fire extinguisher gas float around demonstrators during a protest against the military coup in Yangon, Myanmar, on March 2, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Stringer

Myanmar is burning: with rage, with demonstrations, with the fierce determination of the civilians to end the newly imposed military rule. From peaceful demonstrations the protests have taken a bloody turn, with pro-democracy protesters refusing to leave the streets and the military using live ammunition to disperse them. On February 28, at least 18 people were killed in what has come to be known as the bloodiest day of the protests. And just yesterday, March 3, at least nine people were killed as security forces fired on protesters.

Death Toll Mounts as Myanmar’s Military Seeks to Crush Protests

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Niharika Mandhana and
Feliz Solomon
March 3, 2021

Police open fire on demonstrators, killing at least 38 people in deadliest day since coup

Myanmar’s military declared it was taking over the country for a year as it detained civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other members of her party. Here's how the coup played out on the ground, and what it means for the nation’s democratic transition. Photo: Lynn Bo Bo/EPA/Shutterstock (Originally published Feb. 1, 2021)

SINGAPORE—At least 38 people were killed as Myanmar’s new military rulers, who overthrew its democratically elected government Feb. 1, continued to unleash a lethal campaign to suppress protests that have swept the country for nearly a month.

The death toll, announced by the United Nations, makes Wednesday the deadliest day since the takeover.

Security forces opened fire at protesters in numerous cities, according to demonstrators and medics responding to the violence. A 19-year-old woman, wearing a T-shirt that read, “Everything will be ok,” was fatally shot in the head. Men were struck by bullets in their eyes and chests as they ran, and police assaulted medics.

Protesters had been more cautious since a crackdown on Sunday, when police killed at least 18 people. Security forces who had only occasionally shot live rounds before that day have since used gunfire frequently, according to civil-society groups, protesters and medics.

Protesters have poured into the streets for 26 straight days demanding that the coup, which ended a decadelong transition to democracy, be reversed. Demonstrations at times drawing tens of thousands have taken place, with crowds mobilizing in towns and cities across the country. The large-scale participation has underscored the broad rejection of the military, which governed Myanmar for half a century before the democratic shift began.

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China worries over rare-earth supply disruption from Myanmar coup

NIKKEI ASIA

KENJI KAWASE, Nikkei Asia chief business news correspondent
March 4, 2021 

Decade after drastic cut in exports to Japan, Beijing sees the tables turned

China heavily relies on imports of rare-earth minerals, mainly from the U.S. and Myanmar. (Source photos by Reuters)

HONG KONG -- While China reigns as the largest producer of rare-earth elements, the recent military coup in Myanmar has reminded Beijing of its reliance on and vulnerability to its Southeast Asian neighbor.

China owns the largest reserves of these strategic minerals, which are indispensable in churning out a wide variety of tech products, from smartphones to electric vehicles, wind power generators and missile defense systems, but it also heavily relies on imports, mainly from the U.S. and Myanmar.

The latest annual report by the U.S. Geological Survey states that China produced 140,000 tons of rare-earth oxide equivalent in 2020, almost 60% of the global total. Its reserves were 44 million tons, double those of Vietnam, which are the second-largest in the world.

Aung San Suu Kyi Fast Facts

abc17 News

CNN Newsource
March 3, 2021

Here is a look at the life of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Personal

Birth date: June 19, 1945

Birth place: Rangoon (Yangon), Burma (Myanmar)

Birth name: Aung San Suu Kyi

Father: Aung San, commander of the Burma Independence Army who helped negotiate Burma’s independence from Britain. He was assassinated on July 19, 1947.

Mother: Ma Khin Kyi, a diplomat and later an ambassador to India.

Marriage: Michael Aris (January 1, 1972-March 27, 1999, his death)

Children: Kim (Burmese name: Htein Lin), 1977; Alexander (Burmese name: Myint San Aung), 1973

Education: St. Hughes College, Oxford University, B.A. in philosophy, politics and economics, 1967

ASEAN Members on Myanmar: Agreeing to Disagree

IRRAWADDY

KAVI CHONGKITTAVORN 

3 March 2021

An informal meeting of foreign ministers of 10 ASEAN member states on March 2.

It is clear that the ASEAN foreign ministers hold different views on the situation in Myanmar and this has attracted global condemnation. However, when they joined up and aired their disagreements, they agreed to disagree. For the time being, that will be the modus operandi. But this platitude will not last very long. Depending on the junta’s behavior, ASEAN will make necessary adjustments as it responds to the level of pressure and measures on its peer.

Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines have been vocal about the military junta in Naypyitaw for obvious reasons. The island republic’s sharp criticisms were well timed and internationally exposed, reflecting its political vision for Myanmar. Singapore still retains its leadership role in ASEAN in setting forth the grouping’s trajectory. In tandem, both Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Foreign Minister Vivien Balakrishnan have done well in outlining their positions against Myanmar and earned praise for their democratic aspirations.

1073 more Rohingyas to be relocated to Bhasan Char Wednesday

Prothom Alo 

English Desk
02 Mar 2021

First batch of Rohingyas arrives at Bhasan Char, NoakhaliProthom Alo file photo

The government is set to relocate a group of 1,703 more Rohingyas to Bhasan Char on Wednesday, offering the forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals a better life until they are repatriated, reports news agency UNB.

Buses carrying this batch of Rohingyas left Ukhiya in Cox’s Bazar on Tuesday afternoon, said additional refugee, relief and rehabilitation commissioner Md Samsuddouza Nayan.

They are expected to reach the Chattogram transit point in Patenga in the evening. Thy will leave for Bhasan Char in the morning.

NY Times: Myanmar uses Israeli war vehicles, American software, European hardware in Crackdown

ABANA

March 3, 2021 

A New York Times report said on Monday that Myanmar’s crackdown on protesters is being implemented with the help of ‘Israeli’ war vehicles, American software and European hardware.

AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): A New York Times report said on Monday that Myanmar’s crackdown on protesters is being implemented with the help of ‘Israeli’ war vehicles, American software and European hardware.

The military junta in charge of the country is using “‘Israeli’-made surveillance drones, European iPhone cracking devices and American software that can hack into computers and vacuum up their contents” to enforce its rule.

Myanmar journalist livestreams as security forces fire near apartment

NEW YORK POST

By Reuters
March 2, 2021

 

A Myanmar journalist live-streamed police firing near his apartment on Monday night, March 1, before his arrest in the coastal city of Myeik.

“Help! Help! They are shooting at me,” said Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) reporter Kaung Myat Hlaing in the video.

Japan's Myanmar Dilemma: How Hard To Push Against Military Coup Leaders? March 2, 202112:00 PM ET

npr

ANTHONY KUHN

March 2, 2021

Myanmar people and supporters march during on Feb. 14 in Tokyo to protest the military coup.Eugene Hoshiko/AP

SEOUL — The military's killing of at least 18 protesters on Sunday in Myanmar has increased pressure on foreign governments to use their influence to push for the release of the country's elected leaders, including Aung San Suu Kyi, from detention, and restore some measure of democratic rule.

ASIA

At Least 18 Killed By Myanmar Security Forces In Deadliest Day Since Coup

Among Asian countries, Japan is one of the most influential. How it decides to handle Myanmar's coup could have a major impact on the Biden administration's bid to put democracy and alliances at the heart of its foreign policy.

Japan, UNHCR sign $10m deal to help Rohingya

THE NATION

Anadolu

March 02, 2021

Japan and the UN Refugee Agency signed an agreement over the weekend to provide around $10 million for improving access to clean water at camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district, where more than 1.2 million Rohingya refugees have been taking shelter following a military crackdown in Myanmar in 2017.

The funds will be used to support the improvement of water supply and distribution systems for Bangladeshi host communities and Rohingya refugees in the Teknaf upazila, or administrative region, of Cox’s Bazar, the Japanese embassy in Dhaka and UNHCR said in a joint statement.

Fifth phase of relocation: 2,257 Rohingyas leave for Bhashan Char

Dhaka Tribune

Anwar Hussain, Chittagong
March 3rd, 2021

File photo: Bangladesh Navy personnel help a disabled Rohingya refugee child to get off from a navy vessel as they arrive at the Bhashan Char island in Noakhali, Bangladesh, December 29, 2020 Reuters

So far, around 14,000 Rohingyas have been relocated to the island in four phases

Some 2,257 Rohingyas left for Bhashan Char in Noakhali in the fifth phase of the relocation process on Wednesday morning.

Six ships of the Bangladesh Navy carrying the forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals left the Chittagong Boat Club jetty, situated in the port city's Patenga area, around 10:30am, said National Security Intelligence (NSI) officials.

The Rohingyas, who have volunteered to be relocated to Bhashan Char developed by the Bangladesh Navy at a cost of Tk3,100 crore, were brought to Chittagong from Ukhiya in Cox's Bazar on Tuesday.

At night, they stayed at a transit camp set up on the premises of BAF Shaheen College in Patenga.

Buoyed by the success of the previous relocation, the government is continuing its effort to move some 100,000 Rohingyas to Bhashan Char in phases to provide them with a better living place.

U.S. Slams ‘Repulsive’ Myanmar Crackdown as Death Toll

Bloomberg
Philip Heijmans

4 March 2021,

A protest in Yangon on March 3. 38 people were killed across the country on Wednesday. Photographer: AFP/Getty Images

The U.S. criticized Myanmar’s security forces for using deadly force against anti-coup protesters as the United Nations said another 38 protesters were killed across the country on Wednesday.

State Department spokesman Ned Price called the loss of life “repulsive” and reiterated that the U.S. was considering additional measures aimed at holding the military accountable. The fresh violence also comes after the junta told security forces to avoid using live bullets.

“We are always looking a policy options that are available to us and that are appropriate given the circumstances,” he said at a press briefing. “The loss of life, especially the loss of life in recent days, is abhorrent.”

ASEAN to tell Myanmar military it is ‘appalled’ by violence, says Singapore minister

CNBC

REUTERS

MAR 1 2021

• Southeast Asian nations will be frank in telling Myanmar’s ruling junta they are appalled by violence in the country, and the region needs to bring together ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the military to find a way out, Singapore’s foreign minister said.

• Foreign ministers from Myanmar’s Southeast Asian neighbors were due to hold talks with its ruling military on Tuesday in an effort to quell deadly violence and open a channel to resolve its escalating political crisis.

• The talks will come two days after the bloodiest day of unrest since the military removed Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government a month ago.

Protesters defend themselves with makeshift shields during clashes with riot police on February 28, 2021 in Yangon, Myanmar.Hkun Lat | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Foreign ministers from Myanmar’s Southeast Asian neighbors were due to hold talks with its ruling military on Tuesday in an effort to quell deadly violence and open a channel to resolve its escalating political crisis.

The talks will come two days after the bloodiest day of unrest since the military removed Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government a month ago, unleashing anger and mass street protests across Myanmar.

Protesters, many wearing hard hats, began marching in the biggest city Yangon for what they said would be another big demonstration. Several shopping malls have closed because of the unrest.

A revolution in the making is taking place in Myanmar

openDemocracy

Khin Zaw Win
02 Mar 2021

Thousands took to the streets of Yangon, Myanmar, on 2 March 2021, the 30th day of protests against the military coup |ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo

The military has made a blatant power grab, unseating the elected civilian government. That is the story in Myanmar, according to a legion of Western journalists and political analysts. There is a palpable unreality to these reports. Dramatic though the coup may have been, it is the aftermath that is seismic for the people of Myanmar.

A fight is brewing over Myanmar's seat at the United Nations

CNN
Richard Roth and Caitlin Hu, CNN

March 3, 2021

Video Here

(CNN)The fight for control of Myanmar has now officially arrived at the United Nations.

In a letter seen by CNN, Myanmar's UN Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun has told the international body that he still represents Myanmar, after making an impassioned speech last week rejecting the country's military takeover.

Meanwhile, a deputy ambassador to the UN from Myanmar will claim that he is now the man the military authorities want to represent the country.

Both sides have sent the UN letters to make their case on official letterhead.

2,207 Rohingyas sail for Bhasan Char from Chattogram

The Daily Star

Star Digital Report
March 03, 2021

This aerial view of Bhasan Char shows a portion of the housing facilities that has been built on the island to relocate the Rohingyas from Cox’s Bazar. The authorities say that the housing is ready to host 1 lakh Rohingyas. Star file photo

A total of 2,207 Rohingyas started for Bhasan Char from Chattogram in six navy ships today.

This is the fifth batch of Rohingyas refugees who agreed to be relocated to the island.

They boarded the navy ships at 10:30am from Boat Club in Patenga, and were expected to reach Bhasan Char by noon, Deputy Secretary of RRRC Md Moazzom Hossain said.

Indipendent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar

မြန်မာကိစ္စ လုံခြုံရေးကောင်စီ တံခါးပိတ်ဆွေးနွေးဖို့ ဗြိတိန် ပန်ကြား

VOA
ဗွီအိုအေ (မြန်မာပိုင်း)
03 မတ်၊ 2021

မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ စစ်အာဏာသိမ်းမှု အရေးနဲ့ ပတ်သက်ပြီး ကုလသမဂ္ဂ လုံခြုံရေးကောင်စီမှာ လာမယ့် သောကြာနေ့ မှာ ဆွေးနွေး ကြဖို့ ဗြိတိန်က ပန်ကြားထားကြောင်း သံတမန် သတင်းရင်းမြစ်တွေကို ကိုးကားပြီး AFP သတင်း က ရေးသားပါတယ်။

လုံခြုံရေးကောင်စီမှာ မြန်မာ့အရေး မှန်ကန်တဲ့ ဆုံးဖြတ် ချက် ချဖို့ ကုလသမဂ္ဂကိုယ်စားလှယ်တိုက်တွန်း

လွတ်လပ်တဲ့အာရှအသံ ( RFA )
မြန်မာဌာန | သတင်းများ
2021-03-03

မြန်မာနိုင်ငံမှာ ဖေဖော်ဝါရီ ၁ ရက်နေ့ စစ်အာဏာသိမ်းပြီးနောက်ပိုင်း ဒီကနေ့ဟာ သွေးထွက်သံယို အများ ဆုံး ဖြစ်တဲ့နေ့လို့ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံဆိုင်ရာ ကုလသမဂ္ဂ အထူးကိုယ်စားလှယ် ခရစ္စတင်း ဘာဂနာ (Christine Burgener) က ပြောလိုက်ပါတယ်။

ကုလသမဂ္ဂ လုံခြုံရေးကောင်စီ၊သူသာ ကုလဆိုင်ရာမြန်မာ သံဖြစ်ကြောင်း ဦးကျော်မိုးထွန်း တရားဝင်စာပို့

B B C

ဘီဘီစီမြန်မာပိုင်း
3 မတ် 2021

အာဏာသိမ်းတဲ့ ရာဇဝတ်မှုကို ကျုးလွန်သူတွေက ဖျက်လို့ တရားဝင် သမ္မတတစ်ယောက်ရဲ့ အာဏာ ပျက်ပြယ်မသွားဘူး ဆိုပြီး သံအမတ်ကြီး ဦးကျော်မိုးထွန်းက သူ့စာထဲ ရေးသား

နယူးယောက်မြို့ အခြေစိုက် မြန်မာ သံအမတ်ကြီး ဦးကျော်မိုးထွန်းက သူဟာ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံကို တရားဝင် ကိုယ် စားပြုတဲ့ ကုလသမဂ္ဂဆိုင်ရာ အမြဲတမ်းကိုယ်စားလှယ် ဖြစ်ကြောင်း ကုလသမဂ္ဂ အထွေထွေညီလာခံ သဘာပ တိ ဗော်လ်ကန် ဘော့ဇ်ကဲ နဲ့ အမေရိကန် နိုင်ငံခြားရေး ဝန်ကြီး အန်တိုနီ ဘလင်ကင် တို့ထံ စာရေးသား ပေးပို့ ခဲ့ပါတယ်။