‘Death sentence awaits us’: Coup-hit Myanmar officers in India

AlJazeera
Sadiq Naqvi
17 Mar 2021

  Dozens of Myanmar police officers and citizens who fled February 1 coup to India now face an uncertain future and fear for their families back home.

Kunga (name changed) at an undisclosed location in Mizoram where Myanmar citizens are taking shelter [Sadiq Naqvi/Al Jazeera]

Mizoram, India – Weeks after the February 1 military coup in Myanmar, Kunga, a 24-year-old low-ranking member of the Myanmar army, was ordered a new set of duties: to spy on the civil disobedience movement (CDM) protesters in Tonzang town of Chin state.

Soon after, he deserted the military, joined the CDM and escaped to neighbouring India.

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Kunga is among dozens of Myanmar security officials and citizens who have escaped to the northeastern parts of India amid a military crackdown on anti-coup protesters. Reports say at least 180 people have died in the violence in Myanmar.

Yangon becomes battle zone as Myanmar junta enforces martial law

The Guardian

Agence France-Presse in Yangon
Wed 17 Mar 2021

Traumatised residents flee area as security forces fire at unarmed anti-coup protesters

Protesters take cover behind homemade shields as they confront the police in Yangon. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Part of Myanmar’s biggest city has turned into a battle zone, with burning barricades and security forces firing at unarmed anti-coup protesters.

Traumatised residents have fled Hlaing Tharyar, an industrial neighbourhood in Yangon that has become one of the flashpoint sites in a nationwide uprising against the military’s coup nearly seven weeks ago.

The junta has increasingly deployed heavier force to quell the demonstrations, with more than 200 protesters reported to have been killed in the crackdown.

Myanmar Mire: Democracy Under Fire

THE I DIPLOMAT

By Mercy A. Kuo
March 16, 2021

Insights from Jane Ferguson.

Trans-Pacific View author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Dr. Jane Ferguson – senior lecturer in Anthropology and Southeast Asian History in the School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, at the Australian National University, and the author of the forthcoming book “Repossessing Shanland: Myanmar, Thailand and a Nation-State Deferred” – is the 263rd in “The Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.”

Black Sunday in Myanmar: Dozens Killed as Martial Law Declared

THE I DIPLOMAT

By Sebastian Strangio
March 15, 2021

The day saw at least 39 people killed by security forces, as Chinese-financed factories came under attack.

Anti-Coup protesters carry an injured man following clashes with security forces in Yangon, Myanmar. Match 14 2021, Credit AP Photo

Myanmar’s ruling junta has declared martial law in parts of the country’s largest city as crackdowns by security forces began to take the contours of an internal counterinsurgency war. At least 39 people were killed by police and soldiers in Myanmar on Sunday, a harrowing crescendo to the six weeks of protests that have followed the military’s seizure of power on February 1.

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a local civil society group, the death toll included at least 22 anti-coup protesters killed in the working class suburb of Hlaingthaya, in the northern suburbs of Yangon, as Chinese-owned businesses in the area were set on fire. At least 16 people were killed elsewhere in the country, including one policeman. The real death toll from the day could well be much higher, with Radio Free Asia reporting as many as 70 deaths from the day’s crackdown, including 51 in Hlaingthaya.

The making of a national revolt in Myanmar

ASIA TIME

By THARAPHI THAN
MARCH 17, 2021

Youth-led protests against the military's coup have morphed into a resistance movement involving nearly every segment of society.

Nurses hold up signs as they march during a demonstration against the military coup in Yangon on February 13, 2021. Photo: AFP/

Young people were the first in Myanmar to peacefully protest against the country’s new military regime. Then came labor unions.

In the weeks since a February 1 military coup, Mynamar’s resistance movement has expanded dramatically to include some perhaps unlikely activists: doctors, nurses, bankers, grocers, railway workers and other working professionals risking their middle-class comforts.

Myanmar was under military rule from 1988 to 2011. During the elections in 2015, the National Democratic League won by a landslide, and party leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a well-known dissident, became the country’s leader. The army overthrew her government on February 1, 2021, and imposed martial law.

Soon, thousands of Myanmar’s health care workers were refusing to go to work – an attempt to thwart the coup regime by grinding government machinery to a halt. Health care is public in Myanmar, and health workers hold 10% of all government jobs. Most hospitals and medical schools have closed their doors.

Japan just talks the talk on Myanmar

ASIA TIME

By TEPPEI KASAI
MARCH 15, 2021

Tokyo's passive diplomacy will only embolden the Tatmadaw, which continues to commit grave abuses with impunity.

Myanmar people living in Japan and others protest near Shibuya Station in Tokyo on February 28, 2021. Protesters demanded the release of the nation's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and others. Photo: Taketo Oishi / The Yomiuri Shimbun via AFP

Since the Myanmar military seized power on February 1, the Japanese government has expressed its “grave concerns” over the coup. It has called on the Myanmar military, known as the Tatmadaw, to “swiftly restore Myanmar’s democratic political system,” and demanded the release of National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and all others arbitrarily detained.

Japan also expressed condolences for protesters killed by security forces, while “strongly” condemning the “violence against civilians.”

Such statements are important, but when compared with the concrete actions taken by other Group of Seven democracies, it’s clear that Japan is not yet using its full weight to pressure the Myanmar military. It has in effect taken a “wait and see” approach.

Chinese factories attacked in Myanmar

ASIA TIME

By AT CONTRIBUTOR
MARCH 15, 2021

State media said 32 factories in Myanmar's Yangon were attacked on Sunday, causing $37 million in damage

People rushed into two Chinese-funded factories on motorcycles with iron rods, axes and gasoline before setting the factories on fire on Sunday March 14, 2021, according to Chinese workers interviewed by Chinese media. Photo: AFP/EyePress News

Beijing said it was “very concerned” for the safety of its citizens in Myanmar on Monday, after Chinese factories were attacked amid a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Yangon.

Chinese state media said 32 factories in Myanmar’s commercial heart of Yangon were attacked on Sunday, causing US$37 million in damage and leaving two employees injured as security forces launched a bloody crackdown on protesters which left dozens dead.

Martial law has been declared in the townships where the factories were located. The Chinese Embassy in Yangon has accused protesters of attacking the factories.

ဘာဆန်းချားရောက် ရိုဟင်ဂျာတွေဆီ ကုလကိုယ်စား လှယ်အဖွဲ့သွားရောက်

VOA

ဗွီအိုအေ (မြန်မာပိုင်း)
17 မတ်၊ 2021

ဒီဇင်ဘာ ၂၉ ရက်နေ့က ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ်နိုင်ငံ ဒုက္ခသည်စခန်းက ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည်များ Bhashan Char သို့ ပြောင်းရွှေ့နေထိုင်တဲ့ မြင်ကွင်း။ (ဒီဇင်ဘာ ၂၉၊ ၂၀၂၁)

ကုလသမဂ္ဂအဖွဲ့ ကိုယ်စားလှယ်အဖွဲ့တဖွဲ့ဟာ ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည် ၁၀,၀၀၀ ကျော် ရွှေ့ပြောင်းထားတဲ့ ဘင်္ဂလား ပင်လယ်အော်ထဲက ဘာဆန်းချားကျွန်းကို ဒီကနေ့ ဗုဒ္ဓဟူးနေ့ကစလို့ သုံးရက်ကြာ ခရီးလာရောက်ဖို့ရှိနေပါတယ်။ ဘင်္ဂလာဒေ့ရှ်ရောက် ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည်တွေကို ဝေးလံခေါင်ဖျားပြီး အန္တရာယ်ကြီးတဲ့ ဒီကျွန်းကို မပို့ဖို့ လူအခွင့် အရေးအဖွဲ့တွေက ကန့်ကွက်နေတဲ့ကြားကပဲ ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ်အာဏာပိုင်တွေက ပြီးခဲ့တဲ့နှစ်ဒီဇင်ဘာလကစလို့ ပြောင်းရွှေ့နေရာမှာ အခုလို အဲဒီမှာ ဒုက္ခသည် ၁၃,၀၀၀ ကျော်သွားပြီဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

Military tightens grip, death toll among anti-coup protesters rises as Myanmar seethes

REUTERS

Reuters Staff
MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA

MARCH 15, 2021

(Reuters) - Myanmar security forces shot dead at least 20 pro-democracy protesters on Monday, an activist group said, and the military junta imposed martial law in parts of the main city Yangon, giving commanders wide powers to stamp out dissent.

 

Supporters of detained elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi took to the streets again despite the killing of dozens of protesters on Sunday in the bloodiest day since a military coup on Feb. 1 ignited mass demonstrations nationwide.

Marches took place on Monday in the second city Mandalay and in the central towns of Myingyan and Aunglan, where police opened fire, witnesses and media reported.

“One girl got shot in the head and a boy got shot in the face,” an 18-year-old protester in Myingyan told Reuters by telephone. “I’m now hiding.”

Solidarity needed to halt crisis

BANGKOK POST

VITIT MUNTARBHORN

PROFESSOR OF LAW AT CHULALONGKORN UNIVERSITY
PUBLISHED : 16 MAR 2021 

The desperate situation in Myanmar calls for concerted international solidarity to counter the Feb 1 coup d'etat and its heinous consequences. To date, scores of people have been killed by junta forces, while several thousands have been detained. The crisis compounds two disquieting situations of a longstanding and multi-faceted nature in the country -- the mistreatment of the Rohingya population (a Muslim community) and the decades-long civil war between the authorities and different ethnic groups.

Sri Lanka races to be another genocidal Myanmar

TAMIL GUARDIAN

Article Author:
New Straits Times

15 March 2021

An editorial by the New Straits Times raises concern over the discriminatory legislation adopted by the Sri Lankan government, warning that the burqa ban and closure of over a thousand madrasahs, highlight that Sri Lanka “races to be another genocidal Myanmar”.

In their piece, they highlight how Muslim and Christians launched legal challenges against the government’s draconian policy of forced cremations which violated religious liberty and noted the Supreme Court’s dismissal without calling for evidence.

The generals, the Buddhists and the Rohingyas

NEW AGE
Mar 15,2021

Getty Images/R Asad

Protests against the February 1 military coup, which ousted Aun San Suu Kyi, continue in Myanmar despite an increasingly brutal crackdown. At the same time there are signs that widespread public resentment against the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority may be softening, writes Dominik Muller

‘YOU messed with the wrong generation’ is one of the popular slogans chanted by many of the young people who have been demonstrating in Myanmar for weeks. ‘My ex is bad, but military is worse’ or ‘I don’t want dictatorship, I just want boyfriend’ are just a few more of the phrases on signs held up by the young generation. After all, their protest also takes aim at a conservative social order represented by the generals and many Buddhist monks.

U.S. says Myanmar military's violence against protesters is 'immoral and indefensible'

REUTERS

By Reuters Staff
APAC

MARCH 15, 2021

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jalina Porter said on Monday the Myanmar military’s violence against protesters was “immoral and indefensible” after the country’s bloodiest day since the Feb. 1 coup.

Supporters of detained elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi took to the streets again on Monday despite the deaths of dozens of protesters on Sunday.

“The junta has responded to calls for the restoration of democracy in Burma with bullets,” Porter said.

Why the Australian Rohingya community is worried the Myanmar coup will backfire on them

SBS NEWS

BY MASSILIA AILI
16 March 2021

Muslim-majority Rohingya in northern Myanmar have been targeted by Myanmar armed forces and police since 2015. Source: AAP

There are fears that it's only a matter of time before the military junta in Myanmar launch another crackdown against the persecuted Rohingya population.

Random arrests, imprisonment and even torture felt all too common before Khin Win's family left Myanmar for Australia in 2004.

Today, he worries the persecution of the Rohingya population could become even worse.

Following the military coup on 1 February, there have been growing fears amongst the Burmese community both in Myanmar and Australia that persecution against the Rohingya people will escalate.

Malaysian field hospital in Cox’s Bazar handed over to govt

The Daily Star

Star Digital Report

March 15, 2021

The Malaysian field hospital, set up in late 2017 in Cox's Bazar by the Malaysian government in response to the Rohingya refugee crisis, was handed over to the Bangladesh government yesterday.

The Malaysian field hospital was handed over to the Bangladesh government on Sunday, March 14, 2021. Photo: Collected

The hospital, situated near Ukhia Degree College was handed over to Bangladeshi authorities in a programme around 11:00am at the college grounds, reports our Cox's Bazar correspondent.

The programme was attended by High Commissioner of Malaysia to Bangladesh Haznah Md Hashim, Refugee, Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Shah Rezwan Hayat, Additional Commissioner Mohammad Shamsud Dauza and other government officials.

KIO/A Destroy Burma Army Camp After Protesters Killed in Kachin State

BNI

Kachin News Group

Monday, March 15, 2021

The Kachin Independence Organization/Army (KIA) destroyed a Tatmadaw camp on Thursday, March 11, after the military regime shot and killed peaceful protesters in Kachin State’s capital city, Myitkyina.

“We heard gunfire at 3 am. The next morning, when we went to look at the military camp there was nothing was left. It was burned to the ground,” said a local who requested for his name not used.

Documentary portraying life at the world’s largest refugee camp makes Canadian debut

LINK
FRINGE ARTS

Léa Beaulieu-Kratchanov 

March 14, 2021

Wandering, a Rohingya Story’ poetically tells a tale of daily resilience

The Kutupalong refugee camp in southeast Bangladesh is currently home to 700,000 refugees, despite only being 13 square kilometres. Courtesy Renaud Philippe

Mélanie Carrier and Olivier Higgin’s latest feature documentary, Wandering, A Rohingya Story made its Canadian debut last month. The Quebec City-based filmmakers take us into the daily lives of persecuted Rohingyas who have sought refuge in southeast Bangladesh.

When he first arrived in the Kutupalong refugee camp in southeast Bangladesh in January 2018, documentary photographer Renaud Philippe was struck by the humanitarian crisis at hand.

The camp’s existence precedes the Rohingya genocide that began in August 2017 in neighbouring Myanmar, which killed at least 6,700 and forced more than 800,000 to seek refuge behind the Bangladeshi border. The increased flow of incoming refugees turned Kutupalong into the world’s most populous camp, currently home to 700,000 refugees, despite its modest 13 square kilometres.

Days of Killings and Defiance in Myanmar, With Neither Side Relenting

The New York Times

By Richard C. Paddock
March 14, 2021

At least 51 people were fatally shot over the weekend, but the nationwide protest movement shows no sign of waning.

Seeking help for a wounded man in the Hlaingthaya district of Yangon, Myanmar, where several dozen people were killed by security forces on Sunday.Credit...The New York Times

Soldiers and police officers shot and killed at least 51 people in Myanmar over the weekend, as they pressed their campaign of attrition against protesters who have defied them in cities and towns across the country.

Despite weeks of killings by the security forces, a nationwide civil disobedience movement — which has paralyzed much of the economy as well as the government’s operations — shows no sign of waning, a month and a half after the Feb. 1 military coup that ousted the civilian leadership.

“We must fight until we win,” said Mr. Tin Tun, 46. “The regime must step down. There is no place for any dictator here in Myanmar.”

Late Sunday afternoon, another wave of killing began in the Hlaingthaya district of Yangon, which is heavily populated by factory workers and where the protests against military rule have been among the most aggressive. A large force of soldiers and police officers was deployed to the township and fatally shot at least 31 protesters, according to a doctor at Hlaingthaya General Hospital. It was the highest daily death toll in one location since the coup.

On Sunday evening, the ruling junta declared martial law in the district — the first such declaration since the takeover — allowing the military to assume all authority in the township from the police.

Responsibility to protect Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar

 

Link : Here

R2P in Myanmar is justified

The Jakata Post
Mangadar Situmorang
Bandung
Mon, March 15 2021

We likely cannot categorize Myanmar as a failed state. The Tatmadaw military regime is still there and seems to be holding effective control of the country’s territory and the entire population, despite the latter’s fight for the restoration of democracy. The country’s foreign relations are likely unharmed with two permanent United Nations members, Russia and China, taking its side. The question, however, is to what extent General Min Aung Hlaing and his military force are able to sustain their coercive rule across a territory that is still plagued by ethnic-based conflicts, while a majority of the people are taking to the streets to call for a civilian-led regime. The military also has to deal with the Kayin of Karen state and the Arakan and Rohingya people, two main ethnic groups equipped with armed factions who fight for self-administered regions or special ...

Link : Here