Pro-democracy protesters, including many doctors in white coats, marched through the night from Saturday to Sunday in Burma, a new challenge to the junta’s murderous repression which has claimed nearly 250 victims since the February 1 putsch.
“Save our leader” Aung Sang Suu Kyi held in secret by the army for 49 days, “Save our future”, could we read on the banners of the protesters gathered before dawn in Mandalay (center).
Other rallies took place overnight, including in Kachin state in the far north of the country, with residents lighting hundreds of candles.
Doctors, teachers, bank and railway workers have been on strike for six weeks to protest against the military regime. They paralyze entire sectors of the economy, already very fragile before the putsch.
– “Not afraid of blood” –
“Our doctors are so brave,” commented protesters on social networks. “We are not afraid of the blood” that the army spills.
Nearly 250 civilians have been killed by security forces since the coup, according to the Association for Assistance to Political Prisoners (AAPP).
The toll could be much heavier: hundreds of people arrested in recent weeks are missing.
“The population lives in fear, people are intimidated (and) treated like combatants” in times of war, deplores the NGO.
In Yangon, the economic capital, the situation remains very tense since two of the five million inhabitants are subject to martial law.
Some neighborhoods have descended into chaos in recent days, with protesters throwing projectiles and Molotov cocktails at security forces, who fire live ammunition.
The shootings escalated even further on Saturday, with at least two dead and three injured in the city, according to the AAPP which lists two other deaths 80 kilometers away in Bago.
Faced with this violence, the inhabitants of Rangoon continued to flee on Sunday.
The platforms of the bus station were crowded with packages and suitcases of all kinds. “I cannot remain living in fear. I have no more work, I am going home,” said a young woman met by a local media.
Some Burmese are also trying to leave the country. Thailand expects an influx of refugees and India has already received several hundred.
The funeral for a mother of three, Mar La Win, is due to be held this Sunday in a town in central Burma. “She had just come out of our house. I heard shots and she fell,” her husband Myint Swe, who managed to hide, told AFP.
“When I came to pick up his body from the morgue, he was covered with wounds, I don’t know if they tortured him.”
When asked, the army did not respond to AFP’s requests.
Burma is closing in more every day. Mobile internet connections remain cut as well as several wifi networks and only State newspapers are available.
– Imposed labour –
The repression also continues in the judicial field with more than 2,300 people arrested.
Three men from Yangon’s Hlaing Tharyar suburb, the scene of a massacre last week with dozens of protesters killed, have been sentenced by a military court to three years in prison, plus hard labor, media say of state.
Officials from the National League for Democracy (LND), Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, are being prosecuted for “high treason”, a crime punishable by 22 years in prison.
The 75-year-old former leader is facing corruption charges and is charged with several other offenses. If found guilty, she could be sentenced to long years in prison and banished from politics.
The putschist generals continue to turn a deaf ear to the many international condemnations.
The European Union is due to sanction 11 Burmese officers involved in the crackdown on Monday. Brussels is also finalizing coercive measures aimed at the economic interests of the members of the junta.
– .
