At least five killed as Myanmar protests aim to 'shake the world'

THE STRAITS TIMES

MAY 3, 2021 Several protesters were killed on Sunday, media reported, after Myanmar security forces opened fire on some of the biggest protests against military rule in days, which organisers said would "shake the world with the voice of Myanmar people's unity."

YANGON • Myanmar security forces opened fire on some of the biggest protests against military rule in days, killing at least five people, the media reported, three months after a coup plunged the country into crisis.

The protests yesterday, after a spell of dwindling crowds and what appeared to be more restraint by the security forces, were coordinated with demonstrations in Myanmar communities around the world to mark what organisers called "the global Myanmar spring revolution".

"Shake the world with the voice of Myanmar people's unity," the organisers said in a statement.

17 embassies call for Myanmar journalists’ release, press freedom

LATINA MEDIA

Online News Editor

May 3, 2021

Bangkok, May 3 (EFE).- The embassies of the United States, the European Union and 15 other countries in Myanmar demanded Monday the restitution of press freedom in the country and the immediate release of journalists arrested since the military coup in early February.

“We call for the immediate release of all media workers, the establishment of freedom of information and communication and for the end of Internet restrictions in Myanmar,” the diplomatic missions said a statement, which was also signed by the embassies of the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day.

Myanmar Fighting, Political Strife Swell Refugee Ranks, Affect Neighboring States

Radio Free Asia
2021-04-30

Ethnic Karen protesters flash a three-finger salute of defiance and display signs calling for the abolishment of the military dictatorship during a demonstration in Dooplaya district, southeastern Myanmar's Kayin state, April 22, 2021.

AFP/KNU Dooplaya district

More than 30,000 Myanmar civilians have fled their villages in the eastern state of Kayin and are hiding in nearby jungles following air strikes in populated areas in response to the seizure of a government military post by a rebel ethnic army, an official from an NGO said Friday.

Fighting that flared up in March in Kayin has driven thousands of ethnic Karen into Thailand, while others cluster near the border. To Myanmar’s west, Bangladesh has beefed up border patrols to stop an influx of Rohingya trying to join fellow members of their ethnic minority in refugee settlements.

Myanmar: ‘The Coup Has Robbed Us of Our Rights’

IWPR
Paul
Saturday, 1 May, 2021

Anyone associated with the protests risks arrest, and no one knows where they are taken.

I am a freelance journalist and analyst in Yangon, and I live at home with my mother and father.

Yangon is my hometown but now the atmosphere here is like a ghost city. On the streets we face a lot of danger from the military. We can go out during the day, taking care, but nobody wants to go out in the evening.

We have a lot of stress because every day we hear news about many people dying. The military and the police have cracked down brutally on anyone against the coup, and everyone is angry about the situation. We feel the coup has robbed us of our rights.

Protesters against military rule in Myanmar march through Manchester city centre

Manchester Evening

Ashlie Blakey

News reporter

1 MAY 2021

Banners read 'reject military coup, save Myanmar'

Protesters marching through Manchester city centre (Image: Manchester Evening News)

Protesters against military rule in Myanmar marched through Manchester city centre this afternoon.

Hundreds of demonstrators joined the peaceful protest which started in Piccadilly Gardens at lunchtime on Saturday (May 1).

UN warns of ‘standstill’ in Myanmar

TAIPEI TIMES

Sun, May 02, 2021

NOT BACKING DOWN: People took to the streets again, despite 759 protesters having been killed so far, while several small blasts were reported in places, including Yangon, Reuters

Protesters against military rule yesterday marched in Myanmar, three months after a coup ended a democratic transition, with several small blasts compounding a sense of crisis that a UN envoy warned could bring state administration to a halt.

The military has tried to end dissent and impose its authority on a people largely opposed to the return of rule by the generals after 10 years of democratic reforms that included a government led by deposed Burmese State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi.

အရေးပေါ် အခြေအနေမှာ သုံးစွဲနိုင်တဲ့ ESS နဲ့ မြန်မာ

RFA
2021-05-02

 

ကမ္ဘာမှာ အကြပ်အတည်းဆိုက်နေရတဲ့ နိုင်ငံတွေအတွက် “Responsibility to Protect (R2P)” လို့ခေါ်တဲ့ အပြစ်မဲ့ပြည်သူတွေကို အကာအကွယ်ပေးရေးအစီအစဉ် ရှိသလို၊ ESS ခေါ် အထူးအရေးပေါ် အခြေအနေ အတွက် သုံးစွဲနိုင်တဲ့ အခွင့်အလမ်းတရပ်လည်း ရှိနေ ပါတယ်။

ဒီအကြောင်း RFA ဝိုင်းတော်သား ဦးသစ်ဆင်းက စုစည်းတင်ပြထားပါတယ်။

Link : Here

Myanmar protesters march three months after coup; U.N. warns of ‘standstill’

KFGO

Thomson Reuters
May 1, 2021 

(Reuters) – Protesters against military rule marched in Myanmar on Saturday three months after a coup ended a democratic transition, with several small blasts compounding a sense of crisis that a U.N. envoy warned could bring state administration to a halt.

The military has tried to end dissent and impose its authority on a people largely opposed to the return of rule by the generals after 10 years of democratic reforms that included a government led by democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi.

UN fails to agree on Myanmar statement, diplomats blame China, Russia

FRANCE 24
01/05/2021

UN Special Envoy to Myanmar Christine Schraner Burgener had a long meeting with Myanmar junta leader General Min Aung Hlaing on the sidelines of an ASEAN meeting STR AFP/File

United Nations (United States) (AFP)

The UN Security Council failed to agree Friday on a joint statement on the crisis in Myanmar after a closed-door meeting, with diplomats blaming Beijing -- the junta's main backer -- and Russia for raising objections and putting forward their own competing text.

The session was convened by Vietnam to present the conclusions of a recent Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Indonesia. ASEAN is to appoint an envoy to help resolve the crisis sparked by the February 1 coup by the Myanmar military.

During the meeting, the UN Special Envoy to Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener, who is currently touring the region, gave a report on her long meeting with Myanmar junta leader General Min Aung Hlaing, held on the sidelines of the ASEAN meeting.

UN calls for return to democracy in Myanmar, end to violence

AP

EDITH M. LEDERER

May 1'2021

Anti-coup protesters run after seeing police and soldiers arrive to disperse their demonstration in Y

angon, Myanmar, Tuesday, April 27, 2021. Demonstrations have continued in many parts of the country since Saturday's meeting of leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, as have arrests and beatings by security forces despite an apparent agreement by junta leader Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing to end the violence. (AP Photo)

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council on Friday again demanded the restoration of democracy in Myanmar and the release of all detainees including Aung San Suu Kyi and strongly backed calls by Southeast Asian nations for an immediate cessation of violence and talks as a first step toward a solution following the Feb. 1 military coup.

The council’s press statement followed a briefing by the top U.N. envoy that the strong, united demand for democracy by the people of Myanmar who have been protesting since the coup has created “unexpected difficulties” for military leaders in consolidating power and risks bringing the administration of the nation to a standstill.

Myanmar ethnic divisions soften after coup

Bangkok Post

WRITER: BY HANNAH BEECH, NEW YORK TIMES
PUBLISHED : 1 MAY 2021 

University students take part in a march against the military coup in Yangon on April 11. (New York Times Photo)

The Myanmar military’s disinformation was crude but effective.

Army propagandists claimed an ethnic group called the Rohingya was burning down its own villages and wanted to swamp Buddhist-majority Myanmar with Islamic hordes. The Rohingya were spinning tall tales, the military said in 2017, about soldiers committing mass rape and murder.

The truth — that troops were waging genocidal operations against Myanmar’s ethnic minorities — was perhaps too shocking for some members of the country’s Bamar ethnic majority to contemplate.

Myanmar approaching point of economic collapse: UN report

UN News

30 April 2020

Peace and Security

The turmoil following the military coup in Myanmar, coupled with the impact of COVID-19 could result in up to 25 million people – nearly half of the country’s population, living in poverty by early next year, a United Nations report said on Friday.

---

That level of impoverishment has not been seen in the country since 2005, and the economy is facing significant risks of a collapse, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) said in its report, COVID-19, Coup d’état and Poverty: Compounding Negative Shocks and their Impact on Human Development in Myanmar.

Inside the underground network smuggling ‘celebrities’ out of Myanmar

The Sydeny Morning Herald
By Chris Barrett
May 1, 2021 —

Singapore: It’s post-coup Myanmar’s version of the Underground Railroad, the network of people and routes that in the 19th century helped some African-Americans escape from slavery.

An ad hoc, multi-faceted support system stretching from the cities to the mountains and jungle of Myanmar’s borderlands that has assisted prominent and high-value “targets” of the south-east Asian nation’s military regime flee a reign of terror that has claimed more than 750 lives.

A police officer who fled Myanmar following the military coup is photographed by the AP at undisclosed location bordering Myanmar in March.CREDIT:AP

That is how it is described by David Eubank, a former US Special Forces soldier and an ordained minister who has run the humanitarian group Free Burma Rangers in Myanmar’s conflict regions for 25 years.

အာဏာရှင်စနစ် - မူလ၊ လက္ခဏာ၊ အကြောင်းရင်းနှင့် အကျိုးဆက်များ

အာဏာရှင်စနစ် ၎င်းသည်နိုင်ငံတော်အာဏာကိုအပြည့်အ၀ ကျင့်သုံးခြင်း၊ ကွဲပြားခြင်းများနှင့် ကန့်သတ် ချက် များကိုဖယ်ရှားခြင်းအပေါ်အခြေခံသည့်အယူအဆများ၊ လှုပ်ရှားမှုများနှင့်နိုင်ငံရေးအုပ်ချုပ်မှုအုပ်စုများဖြစ်သည်

ဖီးမားရှယ် အီဒီအာမင်ဒါဒါ: အာမင်ဖီးမားရှယ် အီဒီအာမင်ဒါဒါ: အာမင်၊ အီဒီ (ခရစ် ၁၉၂၅ ဖွား)

ဖီးမားရှယ် အီဒီအာမင်ဒါဒါ: အာမင်၊ အီဒီ (ခရစ် ၁၉၂၅ ဖွား)

 ဖီးမားရှယ် အီဒီအာမင်ဒါ⁠ဒါသည် ၁၉၂၅ ခုနှစ်တွင် မွေးဖွား၍ ၁၉၇၁-ခုနှစ် ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၂၅ ရက်နေ့မှသည် ယနေ့တိုင် ယူဂန်းဒါနိုင်ငံ၏ သမ္မတဖြစ်သည်။ ဗြိတိသျှလက်အောက်ခံ ကိုလိုနီဘဝတွင် အာမင်စစ်ထဲဝင်၍ သာမန်စစ်သည် အဖြစ် အမှူထမ်းရာမှ ဒုတိယကမ္ဘာစစ်အတွင်း မြန်မာပြည် စစ်မျက်နှာတွင် ဗြိတိသျှဘက်မှ တိုက်ပွဲဝင်ခဲ့သည်။ စစ်တပ်သည် သာ သူ၏ဘဝကျောင်းရာ အလုပ်ခွင်ဖြစ်သည်နှင့်အညီ အာမင်သည် တပ် တွင်း၌ ၁ဝ နှစ်တိုင်တိုင် ဟဲဗီးဝိတ် လက်ဝှေ့ချန်ပီယံ ဖြစ်ခဲ့၏။

မှတ်ပုံတင် ၄ သန်းနီးပါး ထုတ်ပေးမယ်လို့ စစ်ကောင်စီ ကြေညာ

B B C

ဘီဘီစီမြန်မာပိုင်း

02.05.2021

မှတ်ပုံတင်ဟာ မရှိမဖြစ်နီးပါးအရေးပါတဲ့ နေရာမှာရှိပေမဲ့ ရွေးကောက်ပွဲဥပဒေ မူဘောင်တွေအရတော့ မဲပေးခွင့်အတွက် မှတ်ပုံတင်ပြစရာမလိုဘဲ မဲစာရင်းမှာပါဖို့က အဓိက ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

နိုင်ငံတဝန်း မှတ်ပုံတင် ၃ ဒသမ ၈ သန်းကျော် ထုတ်ပေးမယ့် ပန်းခင်းစီမံချက် ကို မေလ ၃ ရက်မှာ စတင်မယ်လို့ အလုပ်သမား၊လူဝင်မှုကြီးကြပ်ရေးနဲ့ ပြည်သူ့အင်အားဝန်ကြီးဌာနက ထုတ်ပြန်ပါတယ်။

Myanmar airstrikes target ethnic forces on 2 fronts: reports

NEW YORK POST

Associated Press
April 29, 2021

In this image made from video by the Transborder News, smoke rises from a Myanmar Army camp near the border of Myanmar and Thailand Tuesday, April 27, 2021.Transborder News via AP

BANGKOK — Myanmar government forces launched airstrikes against ethnic minority guerrillas in two areas of the country on Wednesday, local reports said.

Fighting has been raging daily in northern Myanmar in territory controlled by the Kachin Independence Organization, representing the Kachin minority, and in the east by the Karen National Union, representing the Karen.

Rockets fired at two Myanmar air bases, says military

Bangkok Post

WRITER: REUTERS
29 APR 2021

Unidentified attackers fired rockets at two Myanmar air bases on Thursday but there were no casualties and only minor damage in another sign of deteriorating security since the military overthrew an elected government three months ago.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attacks, which the military confirmed at a news briefing.


While the armed forces have been battling insurgents in remote frontier regions for decades, attacks on such high-profile military facilities in central areas have been rare.

Glaring glimpse into Myanmar military’s self-delusion

ASIA TIMES

By DAVID SCOTT MATHIESON
APRIL 29, 2021

Junta report presented to ASEAN on Myanmar's political situation revealed a tortured relationship with the bloody truth

Myanmar's commander-in-chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and his wife Kyu Kyu Hla leaves after visiting a Muslim Free Hospital and Medical Relief Society in Yangon, September 17, 2019. Photo: Sai Aung Main/AFP

Myanmar’s junta leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing arrived at the recent Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Jakarta with justifications for his February 1 coup compiled in a neat document entitled “The Current Political Situation in Myanmar.”

Written in a first-person account redolent of a court case defense summation, the 118-page paper outlines the alleged fraud and corruption at last November’s elections that motivated the coup and subsequent responses by the military, or Tatmadaw.

EU ready to help restore democracy to Myanmar - high representative

Reuters
April 30, 2021

People hold placards as they attend a protest against Myanmar's military coup in Launglon, Myanmar April 23, 2021 in this picture obtained by Reuters. DAWEI WATCH via REUTERS

The European Union is ready to offer its support to all parties to help restore democracy in Myanmar, the bloc's high representative told ASEAN states on Friday.

Southeast Asian leaders said after an emergency ASEAN summit last week that they had reached consensus with Myanmar's junta on ending violence there. read more